


Breathe underwater

by mirawohoo (metawohoo)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Grief, M/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9608354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metawohoo/pseuds/mirawohoo
Summary: Jonathan and Gabriel's friendship, as baffling as it was to the rest of the world,worked.There was a balance of sorts. Jonathan loved to talk; Gabriel loved not to. As the musician was enamored with the sound of his own voice and did not need to belistened to, they got along superbly.





	1. The deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sinfulpapillon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinfulpapillon/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for the wonderful [Sinfulpapillon](http://sinfulpapillon.tumblr.com/), who is is an amazing friend, the kindest person ever, _and_ a great artist to boot!
> 
> It was supposed to be a one shot. It... kind of... grew. Seeing how I'm terribly late and nowhere near done and all, I will post it chapter by chapter.
> 
>  **I have not added the ships and spoilery keywords to the tags because I want the story to be a surprise to Sinfulpapillon.** I will fix that once the story is complete. If you want to avoid content you might not like, I'd advise waiting until I'm done before reading. :)

People drown in silence. Contrary to popular belief, there is little chance to hear them scream for help. Unlike what the movies would have you believe, they do not thrash and kick and flail in the water. How could they? The deep is pulling them down and what little noise they make is that  _ gasp  _ when they surface for an instant.

They could be at arm's distance from you then just  _ gone _ . Would you notice them sinking into the abyss, if you were watching for the wrong signs, if you were listening for cries for help forever trapped in breathless lungs? Would you? Or would you find yourself cradling a body washed up on the shore?

 

##  ###

 

“Your wounds will heal,” Fu said as Gabriel pushed the Butterfly Miraculous over the table, under Nooroo’s concerned gaze.

The pink Kwami was hovering above his master’s shoulder, when he could have easily flown away and landed next to the Guardian he was being released to. Surprisingly, the prospect of freedom seemed to cause him more anxiety than joy. He was a kind soul.

His captor’s fingers remained pressed to the brooch for a handful of seconds, then Gabriel forced himself to let go of the Miraculous. And, just like that, Nooroo was gone.

So was Hawk Moth.

Fu lowered his head and pursed his lips, letting his visitor reach inside his jacket to retrieve yet another piece of jewelry. That one was aquamarine and blue and, more importantly, still active, even though it was not bound to a human host. Not that you could see, anyway.

Gabriel put it down on the table. He did not let go.

“Mourning is a lonely road, yet the most traveled of all,” the Guardian continued. “You might not believe it now, but the pain will ease. The scars will fade.”

The blond standing in front of him did not comment. He pushed the Miraculous forward, hand trembling, though he was pressing the artefact down so hard it could have scratched the wood of the table. He took a few moments to compose himself. When he finally let go of his wife’s Miraculous, his hand was no longer shaking.

“You will move on,” Fu promised. “You will love again.”

Gabriel did not reply. He merely stared at the old man then turned away, walking out without a word. He saw no point in voicing the only answer he could give to that speech, the only thought left in his mind at that moment. It was short and quiet and devoid of anything resembling emotion. ‘No’.

 

##  ###

 

"Father!" Adrien exclaimed when he ran into the dining room that evening, after stampeding down the stairs of a house he thought empty, to find his father sitting at the table with his laptop. "I, er, I didn't know you were home."

He really did not, or he would have  _ walked _ into the room, at an acceptable pace, in silence. Gabriel did not like it when he acted like a 'wild animal' in the mansion.

"I can see that," his father replied, not looking up from his screen.

The table had been set, and there were two plates: one at each end of the table. Gabriel was sitting on one of the sides, with his back to the chimney.

"Did your Chinese lesson go well?" he asked.

Adrien nodded, sitting at his end of the table. He had expected dinner to be served already. It was six in the evening, after all. He didn't quite know what to do with himself without food to occupy himself with.

"It was really interesting," he said. "We read up about the battle of Suiyang, too."

Well, he wouldn't have described that part as 'interesting', more 'deeply horrifying', but he was trying to make small talk.

"What about  _ your  _ day?"

Gabriel stared at his laptop for a moment, then closed the lid.

"One of our major projects is over," he replied. "I should have more free time from now on, at least for a little while."

Adrien brightened - he couldn't help himself - then realized 'over' was not necessarily a positive term.

"Over, 'completed'? Did it go well?"

Gabriel unplugged the computer.

"Yes," he said as he rolled the power cord around the charger.

And then, because conversation was no longer a thing that happened between the two of them, he put the laptop away and took his seat at the other end of the table. Adrien cleared his throat. His feet seemed to have taken a life of their own and were twisting left and right under the table.

"M-maybe if we  _ both _ have free time, we could do something together!" he suggested. "I mean, I'd have to ask Nathalie, I think I have shoots all week, but…"

"Of course we will," Gabriel cut in. He turned to the door, frowning. "Now where is our food?"

He huffed, standing and crossing his arms, then gave up on waiting altogether.

"I'll go see what is going on," he announced, all but storming out of the room.

Adrien was left alone to stare at his plate and play with his fork. Nathalie arrived barely a minute later with the food. Gabriel did not return.

 

##  ###

 

More free time did not necessarily translate to 'more time with one's family' but, really, who would have believed otherwise? When Gabriel's downtime turned into work meetings and when he filled every breathing moment with paperwork and phone calls, his son was unsurprised.

All Gabriel had ever wanted was to be left alone with his thoughts.

All he had ever done was wall the thoughts off with work.

Adrien did try. He suggested, insinuated, reminded, asked, probed, inquired and begged, all of that to obtain vague promises and tired rebuttals.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

When a disheartened Nathalie came to fetch him on a Saturday morning because his father wanted to talk, Adrien understood exactly what it meant: a brief interview on his week, businesslike, perfunctory, because it was all Gabriel would have time for. There was no point dreaming about outings or board games sessions, or even chitchat. He dejectedly made his way downstairs, then knocked on the office's door and tried not to sigh.

"Come in," his father called.

Adrien did.

He understood his mistake the moment he saw his father's outfit. Black suit. Black tie. Black shirt. Black pants, black socks, black shoes, black, black, black.

His heart and his hopes sank. His entire world sank.  _ He _ sank, almost to his knees. Gabriel's voice made him jump before he could fall.

"Please sit," his father said, not murmuring but  _ nearly. _

There was no emotion left in his voice. It was not suppressed, which would have been the norm, but gone. If anything, he sounded vacant.

Adrien was tearing up by the time he finished taking the five steps that separated him from the table. He was trembling as he sat down, and feeling ill on top of it.

His father was staring into space, looking down at his hands. He had closed one over the other and his fingers were digging into his skin.

"I'm afraid I have terrible news," he told Adrien, but of course Adrien knew that.

"M-mom?"

Gabriel clenched his hand around his fist, then forced himself to let go. He sighed and bridged his hands in front of him. That was when Adrien noticed he was wearing not one but two rings. The first one was his wedding band, which had never stopped wearing. The other one was a thinner, smaller silver band wrapped around his little finger.

Adrien dissolved into tears.

"I am sorry," his father said, finally meeting his eyes. "The police called me a few hours ago. Your mother…" 

He breathed in. 

"It would seem your mother…" 

He swallowed.

"Her remains were found some way off a hiking path south of Vouvant," he explained, even though Adrien's mother had never indicated she would be  _ anywhere _ south of the village. The police had always searched north and west, as she had told everyone she would be visiting the medieval tower Vouvant was known for.

"It appears she decided to explore a little traveled path through a forest," Gabriel continued, "then strayed and… fell. The area is treacherous, with underground caves. She… She did not suffer," he added, as if it could help. "Everything indicates she died on impact."

Adrien bit down on his lip and nodded. He lowered his head to conceal his face and his tears, but couldn't stop trembling.

Silence fell.

A moment went by.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said.

He reached across the table but pulled his hand back halfway through the gesture. He stood and circled the table instead, sitting next to his son and squeezing his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I wish…"

The boy turned to him and waited, but it was clear Gabriel was at a loss for words.

"I'm sorry," he murmured once again, pulling Adrien into a hug. "I'm sorry."

##  ### 

Gabriel woke up feeling as if an invisible weight was hovering over him, forcing him into inertia, as if moving a single muscle would have required superhuman efforts. His body had turned to lead, his will to fog.

If he did get up and out of the room, he would likely cross paths with his son, whose mother he had killed. For all of his lies about hiking trips gone wrong and terrible accidents, he knew the truth. It was his decision to pretend there was nothing left to be done. Adrien needed closure more than he needed the truth, of course, so Gabriel had not told him "her Kwami was keeping your mother's soul safe and all I had to do was find a body to bring her back", nor "I gave up on her", "I gave up on our family". But  _ that _ was the truth, and he would have to live with it.

He had nearly managed to smother that guilt, but holding one's weeping son took its toll on one's conscience.

He stared at the ceiling.

He waited.

In time, his alarm stopped beeping. Then a quarter of an hour went by and it started again. That was when Gabriel decided to get over himself and out of bed. He sat, he silenced his alarm, he forced himself up and to the bathroom door for a quick shower that proved useless at reviving his leaden body. Every gesture was an effort.

He still managed to get dressed - a fresh suit, black - and ready for the day. Ready to  _ face _ the day was another thing entirely, but there was no helping it.

He was about to leave his bedroom when he spotted the wooden box on his nightstand. He recognized it instantly, since Adele had owned the exact same. She had found hers in her school locker, at the age of sixteen, when she had been chosen as Duusu's heroine.

And now one was waiting for him on his nightstand.

Gabriel wished it would vanish. He wiped cold sweat off his face as dread settled in the pit of his stomach, making him queasy. He took a deep breath to calm himself, then sat down on the bed and picked the box up.

What if Duusu had argued with Fu? What if she had convinced the old man that there  _ was _ a chance to save Adele?

What if.

He opened the box and found the Butterfly Brooch inside.  _ Nooroo _ . He closed his eyes and collected his thoughts, then ran the tip of a finger over the Miraculous. Butterflies erupted out of it, spreading inside the bedroom, landing on the walls and furniture. Nooroo burst out of the brooch in a ball of pink light.

Gabriel wasn't one to let anxiety overwhelm him for long: weakness was best used as fuel for anger, and anger - as long as he kept it under control - could keep him afloat through dark times. It had before.

"What are you doing here?" he barked.

Nooroo shrank away, lowering his head.

"I… I asked to be sent back, Gabriel. I did not think you should be abandoned."

" _ Abandoned, _ " Gabriel repeated in disbelief.

_ Abandoned. _

Hadn't he been 'abandoned' when he had tried  _ everything _ to get Fu's attention? When he had plastered copies of the Miraculous and of magical symbols all over the world through his jewelry line? Had he not begged for help loud enough? And  _ now _ Nooroo and Fu showed concern?

And this after the shreds of his conscience had finally prevailed, at a cost he was still not sure he could accept. And after  _ that _ , they sent him a temptation that would forever torture him. But, of course, Fu would not have risked giving him a weapon if there was still someone left to fight for. The Miraculous' presence meant Adele could no longer be saved.

"I did not want you to be alone," Nooroo explained. "Especially not now."

"I do not need you  _ pity _ ," Gabriel snapped, slamming the lid closed.

He felt the briefest vertigo - purely imagined - and closed his eyes. Around him, both Nooroo and his butterflies had vanished. The room was silent, more silent than it had been a minute before, when the mere presence of the butterflies had filled it with a  _ sense  _ of noise.

The varnished wood of the box creaked between his hands as he slowly, painstakingly collected himself.

##  ###

 

The box ended up on the windowsill of Gabriel's bedroom and there it stayed.

It stayed there the entire day, as Gabriel tiptoed around his heartbroken child. His own patience was worn thin. His words came out sharper than he intended them to be, his tone colder. For all of his efforts to show love and compassion, he barely managed to scrape enough warmth together to squeeze Adrien's shoulder and hug him once or twice. Fury had replaced even his grief, and there was no calming down.

When he returned to his bedroom, in the late evening, the box had not moved.

Gabriel clenched his teeth, ignored it and went to bed.

The box was still present the next morning, just like the next evening, just like the morning after that. It stayed there through five days of mourning, as Gabriel avoided the room altogether and waited for Wayzz and Fu to collect the bloody thing.

It stayed there through Adele's funeral, as a closed casket filled with scraps of wood was lowered into the ground. Bribes had taken care of both the police and the funeral home. Officially, freshly recovered bones were being laid to rest. Officiously, all that was left of Adele was her silver wedding band and her Miraculous. Both were resistant to magic. There was nothing Gabriel would have spared with - not a thing, not one - so scraps of wood and cloth had been used to give the illusion of weight, so the casket would not feel empty.

Nathalie handled Adrien while Gabriel handled the crowd. She brought the boy home hours before Gabriel could bring himself to return. When he finally did, he found Adrien distraught but also exhausted. The boy fell asleep against Gabriel, in the sofa, not twenty minutes after Gabriel had joined him in his room. 

Cognac made for a good companion in the following hours.

When Gabriel finally went to bed, the box was still on the windowsill.

He ignored it.

Days went by. Gabriel fell into the habit of not looking at the window anymore. It was simpler to pretend that side of the room did not exist, to focus on the path between the bed and the wardrobe, the wardrobe and the bathroom, the bathroom and the door, the door and the bed.

Weeks went by. The box showed no sign of disappearing. The maids cleaned it. It did not collect dust. It moved by an inch or two, at times. But it did not vanish.

Two months and ten days after the cursed thing's appearance, Gabriel opened it again.

" _ Why _ hasn't he collected you?" he snapped at Nooroo the moment the Kwami opened his eyes.

Nooroo needed a second or so to get his bearings. He looked around, perplexed, then his expression darkened. He turned to Gabriel, looking deeply saddened.

"Because the Guardian did not send me," he explained. " _ I _ asked to be sent back."

"I think I made it clear enough your so-called concern is not welcome."

"That does not mean you should not get it."

Gabriel clicked his tongue.

"One would think you would have learned from your time with me."

Nooroo tilted his head to the side.

The human scoffed.

"Is it not your duty to assist  _ heroes _ , rather than monsters?"

The Kwami tilted his head to the other side. Then he sighed.

"I am uniquely qualified to understand how anger and pain change people, Gabriel. Having spent months exploiting that weakness in others, I am surprised you couldn't recognize it in yourself. It is something that can be overcome, as we have both seen proven time and time again. Temporary corruption does not mean death of the heart."

Gabriel snorted at that naivety. Such forgiveness made no sense to him. A 'dead' heart and a rotting one led to the same results. You couldn't unearth light from a soul that had none.

"Get him to pick you up," he said. "I am sure you have your ways."

Nooroo studied his face. His own features betrayed nothing but tiredness.

"Should my powers be needed, I  _ will  _ be collected. In the meantime, I was allowed freedom and intend to use it."

Gabriel closed the box.

##  ###

 

If you had to be honest, Nooroo was not terrible company.

For all of his unwelcome concern, the creature was meek. That submissiveness had made him a reluctant, yet obedient partner to 'Hawk Moth'. Gabriel knew the Kwami would voice his opinions, but not too loudly. He knew he wouldn't argue back. Yet, he kept Nooroo in his brooch, the brooch in its box and the box in his safe, for weeks. The creature would survive forced slumber. He had slept for centuries. What would a few months change?

Rather than thinking of the Kwami, Gabriel tried to focus on his son.

Adrien needed it. He needed a  _ father _ , even if said father had so little warmth left to share every single attempt he made to comfort the boy was a pure display of acting skills. Gabriel was certain his son could see through the mask. He was a good liar. He knew when someone wasn't fooled. Adrien, of course, did not comment and took what shreds of affection he could get. He was a good liar too.

The boy was blessed to have Nathalie, at least. She loved him like her own child (which, granted, she tried her best not to show), and even if Adrien did not realize how deeply she cared, he at least knew she  _ did _ .

Gabriel tried.

He made sure to be home often. If he was home, he made sure not to spend that time in his office, despite the overwhelming urge to hole himself in a locked room. Every evening at six, he joined Adrien for dinner, so the two of them could attempt some awkward small talk and exchange meaningless pleasantries. As that was clearly pointless, Gabriel tried to introduce activities more conducive to bonding: he took the boy to the cinema, and to the theater. He retrieved board games from the attic, so they could play together like they used to before Adele had… had...

They played Trivial Pursuit, mostly, on saturday evenings.

It lasted three weeks.

It only underlined her absence, really. She wasn't there, between them, whispering the answers when Adrien did not know them. The pawns did not 'mysteriously' move on the board when they looked away. There was no overdramatic reading of the questions, no happy laughter when someone got the answer right (or ridiculously wrong). Adrien and Gabriel both tried to summon some cheer, but they could not fill the glaring hole in their world.

On the third saturday, they went to bed without finishing a long, drawn-out game, and the Trivial Pursuit box returned to the attic.

Failing to find a single way to connect with the boy, Gabriel, step by step, day by day, retreated into his work. He couldn't bring himself to draw, but he never lacked for paperwork to fill and emails to answer to.

Adrien had distractions of his own.

##  ###

 

It was well past two in the morning - on a wednesday, at that - when Gabriel finally released Nooroo. He'd been standing at the window, waiting, with the lights off and the curtains half drawn, so the Kwami looked around it mild confusion.

Gabriel did not even turn. He balled his fist over the brooch and let a perplexed Nooroo hover to him. With the darkness and silence lulling them into sleep, the butterflies quickly found themselves a spot to land on. They all stilled.

"Why hasn't Fu taken the Miraculous back?" Gabriel asked through clenched teeth.

Nooroo tilted his head to the side.

"I am not needed?" he replied, perplexed. "I told you, I-"

He went silent when he noticed motion outside, the same motion Gabriel had been waiting for the best part of an hour. Chat Noir had just landed on the roof facing them. Helping himself with his magical staff, he propelled himself across the street, at a calculated angle and height that guaranteed none of the mansion's cameras could catch him.

Gabriel gave Nooroo a glacial look.

"Why?" he repeated.

He kept his anger well bottled.

With Hawk Moth gone, he had supposed the young heroes would retire. That page was turned, Paris was safe. There was no reason for Adrien to patrol the streets, face new enemies and risk being -  _ vaporized _ \- harmed. He could, he  _ should _ have surrendered the ring.

But  _ no. _

"It's…" Nooroo trailed off. "He is needed, Gabriel. You might have been their most prominent enemy, but you know just as well as I that there are more battles to fight and more hope to give."

"I am familiar with that line of reasoning. Adele adhered to it."

That got a sigh out of the Kwami, who seemed at a loss for words.

"It could be  _ any _ boy," Gabriel retorted. "My son does not  _ have _ to be the one facing gun-toting criminals and saving pets from burning houses."

Nooroo lowered his head.

"Is he leaving often?"

"Every night. Some afternoons, too, if his strange absences from school are anything to go by."

Gabriel was not sure whether what he felt was fury or spite. He had every right to be angry at Adrien for lying and endangering himself but, if he had to be honest, it was not what had him seething.

The Kwami mulled over his words.

"Have you considered that  _ Plagg _ might be the one needed? Adrien  _ loves _ being Chat Noir. It makes him happy."

"His mother was happy too," Gabriel pointed out. 

And then he put the brooch away.

##  ###

 

Adrien had scarcely ever met master Fu: Chat Noir had been summoned for the first time months before, after the Volpina incident, when he had dropped his father's book somewhere in the park and Ladybug had somehow found it. Not knowing in how much trouble it could land Adrien, she had brought it to the Guardian who, instead of revealing Chat Noir's identity, had simply asked her to send the young hero to him.

"I apologize on behalf of Tikki," the old man had told Adrien as he handed him the book back. "We had been looking for this codex for centuries, and when it turned up, she got carried away. She does not know who you are, of course, so she could not guess the book would be safe with you."

"Why would my father own a book on the Miraculous?" Adrien had asked. "Why would he have an  _ important _ book on the Miraculous? I mean, you just told me it was lost, so how would he even have found it?"

Fu had shrugged it off.

"It is entirely possible he acquired the book without knowing what was in it, as an antique, just for inspiration. Having taken a look at Gabriel's jewelry catalogue, it is definitely the purpose he used it for. Young Lila Rossi's pendant was heavily inspired by Volpina's Miraculous, among other things. I wouldn't be concerned."

"Oh. Oh, fine," Adrien had replied, relieved. "So… Do I take it home?"

"Yes, I think that would be wise. The codex will be perfectly safe in your house, and a grounded Chat Noir would do no good to Ladybug. Frankly, if Tikki had known the book was in  _ your  _ care, she would not have taken it."

Adrien had swallowed, knowing that 'grounded' was the understatement of the century.

He had taken the book home.

At that point, he had been  _ so _ glad to have met the Guardian. For a start, he had gotten the book back. He had  _ not _ been looking forward to Gabriel's reaction, and had spent the entire trip home cradling the Codex like his firstborn.

On top of that, he had learned tons about the Miraculous, which was awesome. Fu had told him all about them (well, as much as could be squeezed in a two hours conversation). It was incredible to discover that heroes of the past had been Miraculous holders. Robin Hood had been a Chat Noir!  _ Robin Hood! _ And Joan of Arc had been a Ladybug, just like Tomoe Gozen. Alexander the Great had wielded the Butterfly Miraculous. And there were  _ more _ Miraculous, too: several more in the set Plagg's and Tikki's had come from, and dozen of others Adrien had seen in the Codex. He was fascinated, and would have gladly read the book from cover to cover if he had not believed his father would kill him.

His reverence for Master Fu had not lasted. Not two weeks later, Plagg had fallen ill and asked to be taken to the Guardian. Of course, Adrien had raced there. Plagg tended to exaggerate and to fake exhaustion to get out of having to transform, but there was no mistaking his feverish state with simple apathy.

It was during that visit that Adrien had discovered that master Fu was keeping secrets from him. So was  _ Plagg _ , for that matter.

Curing the Kwami involved a long ritual, complete with chanting and hand gestures. Adrien had spent the best part of an hour sitting on the floor, while Fu banged a gong and recited Chinese incantations. The old man had, however, vastly overestimated Plagg's acting skills, while underestimating Adrien's understanding of Mandarin. The teenager had easily noticed when Plagg had gone from 'ailing' to 'faking', and when Fu had started slipping questions between his mantras.

"Have you hear from Nooroo at all?" the man had asked Plagg.

The Kwami had answered by moaning and slowly moving his head from left to right as if in terrible pain. Two minutes later, after more chanting, Fu had replied with instructions: 'be on the lookout', 'report to me if anything changes'.

Adrien had said nothing. He had felt betrayed to the core, but saw no point in telling master Fu he had caught him red-handed. If he was to be a pawn, then he wanted some kind of advantage. Rather than picking a fight, he had politely collected a healed Plagg and left.

"Who is Nooroo?" he had asked once well away from Wayzz and Fu's home, much to Plagg's shock.

"What?" he had gasped, jaw slack and eyes wide.

"Nooroo. Nooroo who you are supposed to hear from."

Plagg had shifted in unease, finally remembering which languages his chosen spoke fluently.

"Nooroo is my brother," he had replied. "He is the Butterfly Kwami."

"And he can contact you?" Adrien had snapped, frowning. "And the Guardian knows that?"

"No! No. Nooroo is in the hands of an enemy. He  _ might _ try to contact me if Hawk Moth gets close enough as a civilian, but it would take more luck than even Tikki has. I am still supposed to keep an eye open, just in case I spot him."

"That's it?" Adrien had insisted.

He still felt used, and it stung enough to keep him suspicious.

"What else would there be?"

"Why didn't the Guardian tell us that? Why would he go out of his way to keep this from us?"

Plagg had shrugged at that.

"He is a  _ turtle _ . Turtles are cautious."

That frustrating answer had marked the end of the discussion.

Months had gone by since then. Ladybug had been summoned once, to discuss  _ Chloé _ , of all things (which had left her grumbling and sulking for a few days, as she had apparently been asked to remember what a positive influence she could have on the 'spoiled' princess', which Chat Noir had dared to say was 'not wrong'). Adrien had not heard of Fu at all.

At first, they had seen no reason to get in touch with him. They had operated alone for months without even knowing he existed, so he was not crucial to their crime-fighting and world-saving. Adrien had too much on his plate at home to really dwell on the 'Guardian' issue, anyway. Ladybug did not seem concerned.

In the end, they did not end up at Fu's door because they had not heard from him, but because they had not heard from  _ Hawk Moth _ . Their nemesis did not have a regular pattern of attacks. He could be quiet for days, even weeks. So, when the Akuma attacks stopped, they paid it no mind, not at first. After three weeks, they started wondering when the  _ imminent _ attack they were waiting for would finally happen. After six, their waiting turned into foreboding and concern. Either Hawk Moth was preparing something terribly nefarious, or something had happened to him.

After two months, they became convinced that the second assumption was the correct one. They met on Master Fu's roof at eleven on a school night and knocked on his door unannounced.

Master Fu being Master Fu, he was waiting for them.

"Ladybug, Chat Noir, welcome," he greeted them before ushering them in. "I am glad to see you."

They watched him close the door, and they followed him into the main room, where Wayzz was waiting for them with freshly prepared tea. The kwami bowed as they entered and returned to his master's shoulder.

Ladybug -  _ Ladybug,  _ the most confident person Adrien knew except when she forgot to feel confident - was awed.

Master Fu invited them to sit.

"I suppose you wanted to discuss Hawk Moth's absence," he told them, serving them each a cup of tea as Ladybug kneeled on the floor next to the coffee table. "It has been two months since he was last active, if my memory serves me well."

Ladybug acquiesced. Chat Noir, who now saw the Guardian as a Dumbledore-like figure (and not in the flattering sense), gave a sharp nod. He sat next to his partner, close enough for their arms to brush.

"It has been a long time," he said. "Long enough to be  _ concerned _ for Hawk Moth, actually. We were wondering if something had happened to him."

"Yes!" Ladybug exclaimed. "He never struck me as a man who would give up. At first, we thought he was preparing a new attack. I mean, up until now, he was opportunistic and Akumatized anyone he could get his hands on… but…"

Fu crouched to kneel, his every joint cracking on the way down.

"I see why you would be anxious," he commented. "I have given the matter great thought myself."

"So what do you think?" Ladybug asked. "Should we be worried? Is there anyway we could figure out who he is? It's about time we do, in any case."

Chat Noir scowled and studied Fu's face, looking for signs of shiftiness of dishonesty. Of course, the old man was serene. Wayzz, however, seemed nervous.

Master Fu looked down at his cup of tea, tilting it back and forth.

"Wayzz has not felt Nooroo's aura… Hawk Moth Kwami's, I mean… Wayzz has not felt his aura recently."

'Recently' was such a vague term.

"Wayzz can  _ feel _ other Kwami?" Chat intervened, sounding as innocent and curious as, say, Adrien Agreste when he asked people if they were sure the photo shoot was at five and not at half past five, because he could have sworn his schedule said so and he was so  _ sorry _ to be late.

Maybe he was being too wary, but he  _ had _ caught Master Fu lying to him.

Ladybug fell for his act. The Guardian, not so much. He gave Adrien a piercing look, then turned to Wayzz as if nothing had happened.

"To some extent," he explained. "Which is why the Turtle Miraculous wielder serves as a Guardian."

"I cannot  _ locate _ them," Wayzz clarified, with a brief, nervous look at Master Fu. He turned back to Ladybug. "I can tell when one of my fellow Kwami is active nearby, but only as… ripples, if that makes sense to you. There is no sense of direction nor distance. Nooroo, on the other hand, is able to pinpoint an human's position with great accuracy, but he cannot track anything magical. We  _ are _ limited in our powers."

Ladybug frowned.

"Nearby," she repeated. "So, if you haven't felt… Nooroo's presence, it doesn't necessarily mean he is not out there. He might just be too far away. How far, exactly?"

"Three and a half kilometers, more or less. We settled in the center of the city so I could monitor magical activity to the best of my abilities." Wayzz saw how puzzled Ladybug and Chat Noir looked. "It doesn't cover the  _ entire _ city. The edges of it are well out of my reach."

Ladybug scowled. You could see the numbers adding up in her head.

"That's a large area, but it would mean Hawk Moth's lair is within it, wouldn't it? Or could he send Akuma from outside the city and trick you into thinking he is present?"

Wayzz blinked.

"I… I don't know, actually. It's something we never put to the test."

Master Fu took a cup of tea.

"It  _ is _ a large area all the same. Wayzz and I spent months searching for Hawk Moth's hideout, however, without results."

"Did you try triangulation?" Ladybug asked. She was still mulling over the news, studying her cup instead of looking up to meet Master Fu's eyes. "If Wayzz' range is limited, then you only have to spend each Akuma attack on a different side of Paris, and refine it down to an ar-"

She noticed Fu was smiling at her.

"You tried that," she blurted out, embarrassed.

"We did," the old man replied. "Paris is quite crowded, unfortunately, and while we are relatively certain Hawk Moth operates from the city's center, that is still a lot of space to cover." He shook his head. "But, at the moment, there is little we can do. Without Nooroo's aura, there is no lead to follow."

"Could something have happened to Hawk Moth?" Chat Noir asked. "Ladybug is right. He is not a quitter. He might be our nemesis and all, but I'm getting worried for him."

"I don't know," Fu answered. "The nature of the Butterfly powers is such that the Miraculous holder never  _ needs _ to directly interact with people. That is how that Miraculous was lost to begin with: a hero slipped away and was never heard of again. It is wielded from the shadows, and shadows can swallow you whole. But I do not think we should be alarmed yet. For all we know, Hawk Moth had a change of heart. You have been steadily defeating him for so long, he might have decided his goal was not worth the battle."

Ladybug and Chat Noir exchanged an uneasy look. It didn't seem like a credible explanation.

"I don't know," she murmured. "We don't know what he wanted the power for. We don't know what it was worth to him."

"And some people don't let go unless they win, no matter what it costs them," Chat Noir added. But maybe seeing Hawk Moth as a cartoon villain was not realistic. Maybe a real person - and he was a real person, wasn't he? - would not take thing to the bitter end. "We don't know anything about him."

Master Fu sipped his cup of tea as he listened to them. When he put it down, it was empty.

"We have seen his strategy change over time," he pointed out, serving himself a new one. "Hawk Moth did not intend for this to be a long-drawn-out battle. His intervention during Stoneheart's attack made that very clear. He wanted to guilt you into surrendering the Miraculous, to use your fear and kindness against you. It was merely a display of force."

"A display of force that nearly got people  _ killed _ ," Ladybug snapped. "A display of force that nearly made Ivan a murderer, that nearly had Chloé crash to the ground like… like… like a… He would have  _ killed _ people!"

"I know. He does not care about the innocents standing in his way, that's true."

Ladybug glowered at him. Chat squinted.

"But that tells us a lot," the Guardian continued, dropping a spoonful of sugar in his cup of tea. "Namely,  _ he does not care. _ He is focused in his efforts. He will let his victims destroy whatever they wish, but only so the two of you can be lured out. His target is  _ always _ the Miraculous. Now, if his goal was evil and destruction, make no mistake, he does not need your powers. He has all the tools he needs at his disposal."

Chat Noir paled. He tried to compile a list of villain motivations that were  _ not _ obtaining ultimate power: some wanted to watch the world burn, some - like Anarky - wanted to destroy the established order, some - like Harley - were being manipulated by a worse villain. That did not seem to fit Hawk Moth's behavior. So what was it? Greed? It sure wasn't protecting Khandaq. The survival of a loved one, like Victor Fries? Survival, period?

He swallowed.

"What if he died?"

Master Fu sighed.

"Let's not be overly pessimistic. There could be a hundred reasons for his absence, and I'd rather think that he saw reason than imagine the worst. I have watched his strategy change. He tried to strongarm you, he tried to unmask you and - I think - for a while he lost his footing. He made glaring mistakes when anger got the best of him, like never asking you to surrender the ring while you were mind-controlled. Instead, he sent you against Ladybug, every single time. Then, we saw a change in his methods, with Volpina and the next foes. From the moment he started relying on guile only, you could tell his perspective had changed."

"He was… calmer?" Ladybug intervened. "That's it?"

The Guardian nodded.

"That is my theory. Resignation was likely settling in. Those were last-ditch efforts."

Once again, the young heroes exchanged a look. They weren't convinced, but Fu was older and wiser than they were.

"Are you sure?" Ladybug asked anyway. "That's… a lot of suppositions."

Master Fu smiled.

"I have faced a great many enemies in my… how old am I again, Wayzz? I'm losing track."

"A hundred and eighty-eight years, master."

Fu cleared his throat.

"In my long life. I have known my share of enemies, and I have known my share of  _ monsters. _ Hawk Moth does not strike me as one. He visibly related to some of his victims: Evillustrator comes to mind. So does the invisible girl."

"Really?" Adrien asked, puzzled.

The old man nodded.

"The ones he left unattended are the ones who revealed the most about his personality. He is not a patient man. He had ways to remind his victims to do his bidding and to punish them for not doing so. In Nathanaël and Sabrina's case, he chose not to."

"She spent  _ days _ tormenting Chloé!" Ladybug exclaimed. "And I was kind of wondering why the Evillustrator got to go on a date."

Fu acquiesced.

"While Hawk Moth is undoubtedly a terrible man, he does have a heart and he does have a conscience," he commented. "Which is why I am willing to believe he gave up on his plans."

"On his own?" Chat asked. "Just like that?"

He knew a thing or two about single-minded men who had it their way or the highway.

"Certainly not 'just like that', and not 'on his own'. For a start, he likely learned a few lessons from his failures. And… he is not alone. It's easy to forget it, but Nooroo is by his side."

Both Chat and Ladybug's eyes went wide. They  _ had _ thought about the captive Kwami, but only in those terms. They had never considered he could have an influence on Hawk Moth. Chat Noir had not even asked Plagg what his brother was like.

Wayzz landed on the table. His eyes darted to Fu and back.

"It's an important thing to remember," he said. "Nooroo is kind. He is obedient and respectful - which is normal for us Kwami - and he is shy. But my brother also understands humans better than humans understand themselves. If he was ever given a chance to help Hawk Moth become a better person, I have no doubt he took it."

It was so strange.

Ladybug and Chat Noir had never envisioned anything other than a fiery final battle. They were supposed to catch the villain, to deliver justice, to right all wrongs. And, for that, they needed to face their foe. They could have dealt with an unrepenting monster. They could have dealt with a misguided man willing to make amends. They had no idea what to do with  _ absence. _

She cleared her throat. He shifted uneasily.

"So, um, what now?" she asked. "What do we do?"

"Now, we wait and see," Fu answered. "The two of you will have more battles to fight, your focus should be on them. Wayzz and I will handle this."

 

##  ###

 

Three months, two weeks and four days after his mother's burial, Adrien returned home after his fencing lesson to find a moving truck parked in the courtyard. It was an unexpected sight, both for him and for his bodyguard, who grunted when he realized that the garage was not accessible. Adrien got out of the car, letting him leave and find a parking spot.

He was confused: Nathalie had never mentioned a move, nor anything out of the ordinary. Neither had his father but his father had closed up. Again. People said there was no place like home. Adrien begged to differ. Hell was definitely coming close, lately.

For a few weeks, Gabriel had  _ tried _ to be present. To be fair, he still did. He was at the dinner table each evening (though his plate rarely emptied). He would even attempt to show up at breakfast, with a cup of coffee. At least once a week, he took Adrien to the movies or to the restaurant. It was everything Adrien had ever wanted and prayed for.

It felt wrong.

At first, it had been awkward. They did not quite know what to say to each other. They had little in common. Their longest conversation had been about  _ Marinette _ and her brand new Etsy boutique (Gabriel had given vague marketing tips and encouragements). Adrien had hoped the awkwardness would fade with time. They were trying, after all. It could only get better.

How wrong he'd been.

He had navigated the treacherous waters of the Agreste Sea for years now, and learned to read a father who talked little and shared even less. He could tell when his father was in a good mood, or in a bad one. He could tell when he was irritated. He could tell when he was angry. More importantly, he could tell when Gabriel was  _ hostile. _ Of course, that was usually blatant: when he disliked someone enough, Gabriel did not hesitate to voice that fact. Adrien had watched him rip people apart often enough.

He was now discovering Gabriel's hostility did not necessarily go hand in hand with outbursts. With Adrien, he kept his animosity hidden. You could still see the minute signs of it: the tension, the clenched teeth, the sharp looks and the sharp tone. He was furious, he was withdrawn, and you could tell he wanted nothing to do with Adrien, despite all of his efforts to be 'present' and to have 'family time'.

Adrien had no idea what he had done.

He was not sure he wanted to know.

What he knew was that his father seemed to hate him - not just 'believe distance was the best way to parent' or 'need space to grieve' - and neither of them seemed able to fix it. He had tried everything he could: being more polite, never missing an appointment, being nicer to Gabriel, and even asking Nathalie for tips. Nathalie had not given him advice, but a promise to talk to his father. She had. For two days or so after that, Gabriel had been apologetic. And then the spite had come back with a vengeance.

Nathalie had never spent as much time checking on Adrien and having conversations with him than in the last two months.

Adrien was done trying. He came home, busied himself with his homework, endured dinner, then ran out as Chat Noir. He felt so much better patrolling the streets than simply being home. There was always a pet to rescue, a mugger to catch, a lost doll to find, a child to console. No Akuma, but he could live with that. And there was Ladybug, of course. He had no idea what he would have done without her.

Anyway, communication wasn't a thing at home. So, it was no surprise that Adrien had not been told about the visit of a moving company.

The house's front door was open and, before he could cross the courtyard to get inside, two bulky men came out carrying a wooden buffet he had never seen before. It looked like a rococo antique, which obviously meant it would have stood out in Gabriel's 'black and white and abstract' paradise. They carried it down the stairs. Once they were done, Adrien hurried inside.

Nathalie was observing the movers with an expression close to a cringe, her impeccable facade cracking. She nearly jumped out of her bones when she noticed Adrien, then frantically looked down at her tablet.

The boy watched her compose herself. He nearly laughed.

"Adrien!" she greeted him, clearing her throat. "I did not realize it was so late already. Did your fencing lesson go well?"

He nodded and shot a quizzical look at the movers.

"Are we getting rid of old things?"

"Yes. Emptying the basement, mostly. We'll be auctioning some antiques and donating some paintings."

Adrien chuckled at the gaudy table a second team of movers was bringing into the room.

"I can imagine why Father would want them gone. Very, uh, ornate."

Nathalie did not answer but she smiled.

"You should go to your room until we're done," she said, pressing a hand to his back. "It shouldn't take long."

He didn't wait to be pushed to acquiesce. He could only get in the way. He took three steps towards the staircase but stopped when he heard a loud 'thunk' coming from his father's office. He couldn't help but look, and what he saw were two men trying to carry his mother's portrait out of the room.

He froze.

"Be careful!" he heard his father snap. "If I had known you'd be so inapt, I'd have thought twice before hiring your company!"

Adrien heard the clicking of heels. A second later, he felt Nathalie stop behind his back and put her hands on his shoulders. At the same time, Gabriel walked in sight of him. They stared at each other from each side of the door, and Adrien saw his father expression morph from shocked to tired.

The movers passed between them and the teenager took that opportunity to bolt. Gabriel's voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"Adrien. May I have a second of your time?"

The boy heard Plagg huff inside his bag. He considered refusing but ended up lowering his head and following his father into his office. It felt wrong to see a large metallic safe where his mother's portrait had been.

He wouldn't look at Gabriel.

"Are you getting rid of it?" he asked.

There was a pause. He thought he heard a whisper and tapped his messenger bag with a finger so Plagg (in case it was indeed Plagg) would be quiet.

"I am merely having the portrait moved to the basement vault. I thought it would do us both good to… make our living space more… neutral."

" _ Neutral? _ " Adrien erupted.

He had seen his father lose himself in that portrait for more than a  _ year _ , but now that they had closure, he wanted to get rid of it? He wanted to erase what was left of Adele? But that was what he did, wasn't it? He distanced himself from whatever he did not want to deal with.

"Yes! There is no point living in the past!" Gabriel replied. He frowned and softened his tone. "What I mean by that is that I would prefer…" He rubbed his second wedding ring and stared at a corner of the room. "... would appreciate not to have to face a constant reminder of her absence. At least for a while. At least in my workplace. I have no plans to remove the  _ other _ portraits, but…"

Adrien's heart twisted in sympathy. He felt guilty for his anger.

"It's okay," he murmured. "I get it."

Gabriel relaxed and nodded.

"The family portrait in the dining room is staying," he said.

Adrien acquiesced. Silence fell, and he shifted uneasily. Then an idea came to him.

"Could I have it?"

Gabriel gave him a puzzled look, so Adrien clarified.

"The portrait. Could I have it? In my room? I mean, if you don't mind."

His father looked pained at that. He hesitated, started to shake his head, then nodded.

"Of course. No. No, I don't mind, of course I don't mind. I'll have them install it."

Adrien swallowed, painfully, with a clenched throat. His voice was was trembling when he answered.

"Thank you, Father."

##  ###

"It's a  _ shrine _ ," Gabriel murmured, trying to count the pictures of Adele his son had collected.

The bedroom was dark, but the boy had left his computer on, with a video still running, which had prevented the screen from going into sleep mode. They cast a faint light around the desk, and the moonlight was weak but not to the point you could not distinguish shapes.

Adrien used an old portrait of Adele as his wallpaper, a modeling shot from her teenage years, which Gabriel had taken himself with his first reflex. Then, of course, there was the Klimt replica, which had replaced fencing and video game posters. Smaller pictures in tiny frames littered the nightstands, desk and coffee table. There was one next to the television, and a row of them pinned to a wall.

"Well, he  _ is _ a lot like you," Nooroo commented, landing on the nightstand next to a photograph of Adrien and Adele hugging.

Gabriel let the Kwami out more and more often. You got used to his presence. You came to miss it. The occasional comments and suggestions were not that irritating, in the end.

His master ran his hands over his face and sat on the corner of the bed.

He had planned to wait in Adrien's bedroom to catch 'Chat Noir' slipping in. He had not meant to pry, just to surprise the boy and give him a firm talking to. He had been considering it for days, and even prepared a whole diatribe.

He had not expected to find… that.

"You knew about this," he muttered.

Nooroo shook his head.

"No. I can't come to this room, I would risk being seen by Plagg. But this is not surprising. He misses her just as much as you do."

" _ Still _ ."

It was not a question, merely a horrified acknowledgment of the situation. It would have been so much better for Adrien to just  _ move on. _ He was young. Wounds were supposed to heal more readily, at that age.

Nooroo tilted his head to the side.

"Can I give you my opinion?"

Gabriel gave him a tired look. He hated taking advice, but it couldn't hurt. He should have gathered it was time for him to listen when Nathalie's occasional suggestions had become a daily occurrence.

"Go ahead."

"You need to get over yourself and tell the boy how you feel," Nooroo said, with a directness that took Gabriel aback. The butterfly Kwami tended to be subtler in his criticism. "Not to expect him to figure it out based on your coldness towards him. Of course, he cannot move on. As far as he is concerned, he has no parents left and no one to confide in."

Gabriel sucked his cheeks in and bit down until he tasted blood.

"Is that how he feels?" he replied in a flat, empty voice.

Of course, Nooroo would know. It was the nature of his powers, after all.

The Kwami did not answer.

Gabriel buried his face in his hands. A minute went by, then several.

"I'm here, aren't I?" he ended up saying.

The justification sounded hollow. He did not believe it. Nooroo immediately challenged his words.

"Did you really plan to wait for his return?"

"Yes."

"Would you really have stayed until then?"

Gabriel did not answer that question.

"Please talk to him," Nooroo pleaded. "You both need it."

It was easier said than done.

"I don't know how to talk to him without  _ ripping him to shreds. _ I just want him to  _ stop. _ "

Couldn't Chat Noir and Ladybug just retire, instead of taunting him? Couldn't they vanish? Couldn't Adrien stop running into the same dangers that had killed his mother? 

Once again, Nooroo remained silent. He did not need to speak for Gabriel to know what he wanted to say: 'get over yourself'.

"Very well," he murmured, standing up and walking to the exit. "Very well."

He did not sleep that night. He did not talk to Adrien the next day either, nor, for that matter, for the rest of the week. Of course, he had breakfast with the boy, and dinner, and the odd conversation about school. The vigilantism, however, remained taboo. Gabriel wanted to find the right words, if they existed at all. 

It had been easier to track a Miraculous down.

After ten days, he gave up.

He knocked on Adrien's door at nine in the evening, making sure to catch him before he could escape for his patrol. The wariness on his son's face, when he opened the door, barely surprised him. It had become the norm.

"We need to talk," Gabriel announced, walking into the room and gesturing at the sofa so the boy would sit.

Adrien did, but his expression was sullen. He crossed his arms and waited his father to start talking. Instead, Gabriel took a deep breath and sat down. He pursed his lips.

"I… wanted to apologize," he explained, much to his son's surprise. "I am… Adrien, I know you slip out of the house every night. I have been trying not to mention it, because I assumed you needed to see your friends and I did not want to interfere. It is a difficult time. I wanted to give you a little freedom."

"I-I-" Adrien stuttered.

Gabriel cut him off.

"But, as you probably gathered by now, I am not any less worried, nor any less furious. I have been trying to keep that to myself. I've been told I'm not the best actor."

He let Adrien assume those remarks had come from Nathalie. She was definitely insinuating it anyway.

"That…  _ That's _ w-why?" Adrien gasped. "I… You… I..."

"We need to set some rules about this," Gabriel continued when it became clear that his son would not form a complete sentence. "We can't go on like this. You know how important your safety is to me."

Adrien lowered his head.

"Yes."

His fist was clenched.

Gabriel closed his eyes for an instant.

"First, let me be clear: if you leave the house, you need to inform someone, be it Nathalie or me. Is that clear?"

Adrien looked up, blinking.

" _ Then _ ," Gabriel continued, "I want you to limit your outings to Fridays and Saturdays. No school nights."

By that point, the boy was gaping. He nodded frantically.

His father relaxed a little. This seemed to be going well.

" _ And _ , on top of that, we are going to discuss a curfew," he concluded. "I expect it will start at ten and expand as you age. Do we have a deal?"

Adrien was beaming. It looked like the weight of the world had been removed from his shoulders and replaced by wings. He tried to suppress his grin but did a terrible job of it.

"Y-yes. Yes, Father, we have a deal."

Gabriel wished he could feel as good about letting the boy run into the unknown as Adrien did to be allowed to. But this compromise could work for the two of them, and it was sorely needed.

"Good."

##  ###

 

"I'm surprised you would contact me at all," Gabriel told Jonathan as the rock star spread over the gaudy sofa of his Grand Paris hotel room. "Especially about a new _project_. The last time that was discussed, you told me I had 'sold out' and that you could not work with a shell of a designer to whom 'creativity was dead'."

As reproachful as the words sounded, they were said with humor. Gabriel had never quite been offended by his old friend's proclamation, not when their respective styles were such polar opposites. They had different visions and, as much as he abhorred all commercial concepts, Jagged Stone was the embodiment of a brand. Maybe the brand was 'rebellious glittery slob', but it had been built with passion and hard work, and the designer could recognize that. Had the musician been an actual deadbeat, Gabriel would have judged him harshly. As things were, they had both made it to the top, in their own way. He knew the effort it took.

"I said that?" 'Jagged' answered, sincerely surprised. Then again, he lived in the heat of the moment. He said a lot of things he forgot the next minute. "I guess I said that."

Gabriel sat down at the opposing side of the table, musing that the Bourgeois had not only gone for the tasteless but also for the unpractical: the round table was so far from the sofas it could only be used for decoration. If there had been any more space between Gabriel and Jonathan, they would have needed phones to communicate.

"You did," the blond confirmed.

"Well, in all fairness, it's true," Jonathan pointed out, a bit dismayed to have to say it, even if he spoke from the heart.

He was still very much the teenager Gabriel had met decades earlier, when he had been tasked with 'helping the American exchange student fit in': hopelessly genuine.

"Jonathan. I came here to discuss a collaboration. So will you be needing designs or not?"

"'Jagged'," the rocker corrected. "And no! No, no, no, that's not why I called you. I  _ already _ have a designer. What I need is more, like, logistics.

Gabriel should have been expecting the unexpected. This was  _ Jagged Stone. _ Insanity was par for the course. Still, this was a particular brand of surreal. Gabriel gaped for a second then cringed and massaged the bridge of his nose.

"In case it escaped your notice, I am  _ not _ running a tailor shop, Jonathan. We are no longer fifteen. You can't just ask me to make you whatever your boyfriend's sister's bestie doodled on the corner of a napkin."

"'Jagged'. And she's not my boyfriend's sister's BFF. She's a promising girl from Paris. Just look at her stuff,"  _ Jonathan Liam David Stone  _ (who was delusional if he thought Gabriel would ever use an adjective as a name) said. 

He grabbed a sketchbook from the seat next to his, considered throwing it across the table, then sighed, stood, and joined Gabriel. He dropped the sketchbook on his knees and waited for the designer to open it. Gabriel rolled his eyes but did.

The art struck him as familiar. It was clearly the work of a child - well, of someone who had not yet gone through years of drawing classes and only had cheap markers at their disposal - yet it had flair. The artist favored drawing teenage girls, which was consistent with a 'promising girl from Paris'. Three pages in, he recognized one of the outfits.

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng," he said, staring at an airy pink dress with floral patterns he had seen in the flesh weeks earlier.

"You know her?"

"She is Adrien's classmate, she won one of our contests, and she designed accessories and album art for you. Yes, obviously, I'm aware of her existence."

Jonathan's face brightened.

"So you know she's good, right?"

Gabriel took a deep breath.

"I know she is  _ promising _ . 'Good' is a term I wouldn't attach to a sixteen year old novice."

"So you weren't 'good' at her age?"

"That's n-"

Gabriel sighed in exasperation. Ten minutes. It had taken ten minutes for them to return to childish bickering, as if they were still teenagers arguing on their way to class. Their interactions always reverted to the same juvenile nonsense, mostly thanks to Jonathan's distinct lack of maturity. Decades had gone by since their schooldays, they hadn't talked in years, but things never changed, did they?

"What do you want from my company, exactly?"

"Marinette designed a set of costumes for my videos. They're great, just look," Jonathan explained, flipping the pages of the sketchbook until he found a series of matching drawings. "There's the dancers, there's me. It's just, she's a  _ collégienne _ . She can't work twenty-four seven on this. That's where you come in."

"That's where our seamstresses come in, you mean?" Gabriel retorted, smoothing the page. The sketches were creative but would need refinement to even make it to patterns, let alone completed outfits. "You could get those services from any shop in town."

"Yeah, but what are friends for?" Jonathan retorted, wrapping an arm around Gabriel's shoulders and giving them a firm smack. "Come on."

Gabriel gave him a side-look.

This was a transparent attempt to promote the girl. Jonathan had undoubtedly grown fond of her and was ensuring she would get what her talent deserved: exposure, praise and fame. Jagged Stone was nothing if not helpful to his fellow artists. Others, like Gabriel, favored crushing the competition, or recruiting it.

She was Adrien's friend.

Gabriel looked at the sketchbook, then closed it.

"I'll consider it," he decided. "Send me scans of the sketches."

 

##  ###

 

Normally, Gabriel would not have gotten involved with the production of a small set of outfits designed by a child and handed over to the workshop with little to no oversight. They were not part of his brand and would not be advertised as such. He was the company owner. He did not have the time to monitor Jonathan's pet project.

Yet, he was at a loss on how to mend the bridges between Adrien and himself. Bolstering one of the boy's friends could only help, however. He had assumed his son would be overjoyed to hear the news. As it turned out, 'overjoyed' was an understatement. Gabriel had let Nathalie handle all communications with Marinette Dupain-Cheng and waited for the news to trickle down to his son through the girl herself. It had taken less than twelve hours and the results had exceeded his expectations.

Adrien had come home from school and  _ raced _ into Gabriel's office, not bothering to knock nor announce himself ('like father, like son', Nooroo had later commented), just run to his father and hug him. Gabriel did not believe in running inside the house nor in being overly demonstrative, but he had to admit it felt good.

His son had thanked him profusely for giving Marinette a chance, for possibly launching her career, for making her dreams a reality, for being so  _ nice _ (which, frankly, Gabriel had heard with puzzlement), and every good deed that could possibly be connected to him by the flimsiest strings (or flat out invented).

Considering that positive reaction, it would have been foolish not to press the advantage by getting involved in the project. Gabriel had asked Nathalie to schedule one of Adrien's photo shoots on miss Dupain-Cheng's first visit to the workshop, so he could join her once done. Gabriel, planning to reap the benefits of those arrangements, walked into the workshop twenty minutes after his son. He found the boy sitting in a corner with a grin on his face, while Marinette showed her sketches and patterns to the seamstresses and Jonathan. Adrien, for lack of a better description, looked smitten.

"Well, this explains that," Gabriel murmured to Nooroo, who was hiding in his pocket.

The Kwami chuckled, then went silent, as people were noticing his chosen's arrival.

Adrien's grin faded into a reserved smile. Dread washed over Marinette Dupain-Cheng, but she took a deep breath, raised her chin and greeted Gabriel with absolute confidence. The workers gave polite welcomes and offered coffee. Jonathan… Jonathan was himself.

"Gabe! You showed up," he exclaimed, crossing the room and wrapping an arm around Gabriel's shoulders. "Come see! Marinette did a GREAT job!"

Gabriel went rigid and gave him the scathing look of someone who had not endured such familiarity in public since he had the power to ruin people's lives. He was all too aware of Adrien's bewildered expression. The boy had no idea that his father and the rock star knew each other: with Stone's constant tours and an ocean between them, they had barely seen each other in fifteen years. Gabriel vaguely remembered scolding Jonathan about throwing then two-year old Adrien in the air to make him laugh, but that was his latest memory of the two of them meeting. There was no way his son remembered that. Gabriel would have prefered for that ignorance of all of the ridiculousness to persist.

Jonathan endured the scathing look and pretended not to notice Gabriel had turned into a living statue. When he  _ finally _ removed his arm, it was in a natural gesture, as he returned to Marinette Dupain-Cheng to introduce her.

The girl was puzzled and her eyes had gone wide, but she still shook Gabriel's hand with the same professionalism she had displayed during the contest at her school, when she had firmly put an art thief in her place. She  _ did _ stutter when she showed him the finished sketches but, for the most part, she handled the situation remarkably well for a teenager.

Adrien inched closer, not quite daring to intervene, though he gave Gabriel a bright smile when the designer commented that Marinette's sketches looked 'promising'.

Gabriel wondered if the cheeky boy hiding behind that facade would ever dare surface without a mask. It was his fault, really: he had demanded respect, he had instilled fear instead. He did not know how to encourage openness. 

He smiled at him.

Adrien relaxed and stepped closer, only to be grabbed by the shoulders by Jonathan, who did not understand the concept of 'personal space'.

"Did your dad ever tell you we went to school together?"

"Uh, ah…" Adrien muttered, looking frantically from the rocker to Gabriel. "Hum. N-no?"

"We were  _ best friends _ ," Jonathan explained. "Always together. Sat next to each other in class, couldn't be kept apart! He designed my first tour outfits and all."

It was all technically accurate. It was easy to be someone's best friend when that someone had exactly  _ one  _ friend, and there was such a thing as 'assigned seats'. Gabriel glowered. He did not glower in a way that could be taken seriously, of course, and even the most murderous glower would have been ineffective on his old friend.

"R-really?" Adrien asked, torn between politeness and a wise instinct not to get involved.

"Yes!" miss Dupain-Cheng chimed in, much to everyone's surprise. "1989. Red jacket with sequins, striped black and grey pants, leather undershirt with silver embroidery and lace trimming."

She twitched when all eyes turned to her, and gave them an awkward smile. They were all too stunned to answer (especially Gabriel, who remembered the abomination she was talking about and had hoped it had vanished from human memory). Adrien was the first to recover.

"Wow. You  _ really _ know fashion. I don't think I ever saw that one."

She avoided Gabriel's eyes.

"I. Y-yes. Of course," she replied, fidgeting. "I have files on e-every major designer, with all of the reference I could find. Tagged, indexed, uh, timelined."

"Wait, you have  _ pictures? _ " Jonathan exclaimed, letting go of Adrien. "I need a copy! They were only in the  _ one _ magazine, and the airline  _ lost _ my suitcase my copy was in, can you believe it?"

"Coeur de Rockeur, may 1989, that's it?" the girl asked. "I got it from an auction website. Have you tried looking there?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes and slowly walked away, leaving them to their animated discussion. He joined the seamstresses to get another look at the patterns, and ended up discussing the deadline (impossible) and Jagged Stone's expectations (unsurprisingly outlandish). It took less than five minutes, which had been more than enough time for Jonathan to lure Adrien into some sort of impromptu modeling with cloth samples used as scarves and cloaks.

Miss Dupain-Cheng was standing a few feet away, moonstruck.

Gabriel smiled. Since his son seemed equally smitten, it would do no harm to investigate the girl's feelings. He joined her, though she did not notice him, even when he stopped right next to her.

"Before you attempt to steal my son away for your own fashion projects," he teased, "let me remind you that he has an exclusive modeling contract with the family company."

She squeaked and whirled to him.

"I uh ah hum…"

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, amused.

"Wasn't it your plan?" he said. "It looked like you were considering it. Not that I would blame you. A talented young designer and a talented young model would definitely make a nice… team. Wouldn't he be perfect for your plans? Career wise?"

"Yeees!" she blurted out. Then she panicked. "I. Uh. I mean. He is a great model, but he seems, uh…"

Gabriel fought to keep his composure as the world was ripped from under his feet and nausea washed over him. He had been through that scene before. He had to gasp for air, but thankfully the girl was too flustered to notice his disarray. She kept babbling, nervously pushing her bangs behind her ears and uncovering black earrings - " _ can I take a closer look?" _ \- and fretting just like Ladybug had when they had discussed Adrien.

He felt about to pass out.

"I'm afraid I have to go," he said, forcing himself to smile. "Appointment with our accountant, it can't wait. I look forward to meeting you again."

"O-Of course! Thank you so much for dropping by, mister Agreste. It means the world to me."

He acquiesced, somehow managing not to drop his facade, then nodded at Adrien and walked out.

He made it halfway through the corridor, then stumbled into a storage room and leaned against the door, overcome by nausea and vertigo. He tried to take deep breaths, but his stomach lurched and he dropped to his knees, gasping for air.

Nooroo flew out of his pocket, concerned, but did not say a word. Gabriel barely registered his presence anyway: all he was aware of was the cold sweat dripping down his neck and the pins and needles running through his trembling arms, as well as the waves of nausea coursing through him. It all receded, slowly, tortuously, leaving him washed out and drenched like sand after the tide. But as the nausea died down, rage moved in.

Why now?

Why now, why now, why  _ now,  _ after all this time? If he had waited just a few months more, if he had paid attention to his son's friends, if he had investigated the boy's classmates, if he had not  _ given up… _

"Did Duusu release Adele's soul?" he snapped.

Maybe there was still a way. Maybe he could attack Fu and get the Peacock Miraculous back. Maybe it wasn't  _ too late. _

Nooroo wouldn't answer.

"DID SHE?" Gabriel yelled.

"I… don't know, master."

Gabriel punched the wall and stood, legs still weak under him. He had to steady himself for an instant, then he whirled and kicked a box of supplies that slipped halfway through the room. He ran his hands over his face, fingers digging into his skin.

Maybe.

Maybe.

_ Maybe. _

 

###


	2. Adrift

Fu's apartment was small and barely furnished, with only a few sideboards and shelves to fill what little space they had to occupy. It had been decorated with just enough paintings and trinkets to give his 'alternative healing' clinic the proper vibe: acupuncture drawings were hanging next to illustrated prints of chinese proverbs. Potted plants and scented candles completed the picture. You could have walked into any IKEA with a hundred euros in your pocket, and walked out with all of that and cash to spare.

It made the place easy to comb through.

Gabriel started with the paintings, lifting them to check for hidden safes and making sure to put them back in the exact position he had found them. He crouched in front of a sideboard and pushed the panels open, tapping the sides and bottom of it to locate hypothetical secret compartments. He made sure not to move the piles of towels and assorted supplies the sideboard contained.

Meanwhile, Nooroo was hovering by the entrance, looking worried.

"Gabriel,  _ please. _ "

His master closed the panels and moved the sideboard by two inches, just enough to make sure there was no safe concealed behind it. Then he ran his hand on the floor under it, looking for a trapdoor. There was nothing.

"If you want to leave so badly," he told Nooroo, "you can just tell me where he keeps the box."

The Kwami gave him a pleading look. Gabriel ignored it and walked to the bookshelf, inspecting it as thoroughly as the sideboard. He checked each of the books to make sure they had not been hollowed out, then put them back in their spot, at the right angle and the right depth.

Deep down, he knew there was nothing to find. The simple fact that Fu had not  _ moved _ made that clear. The simple fact that Nooroo had been allowed to return to him, too. But he had to try.

There was still hope.

He found nothing in, under or behind the bookshelf. He started opening the drawers of the cabinet on its left. Needles, candles, incense and bric-à-brac. No hidden compartments either. Nothing taped under the drawers, nothing buried between the neatly folded towels and napkins.

He felt Fu enter more than he heard him. He froze, still crouching in front of the cabinet.

A moment later, he heard wood tap metal.

"At least you did not break the lock," Fu said. "That's something."

Gabriel took a deep breath and stood, then turned to the old man. Fu was standing by the door, unimpressed. He closed it and joined Gabriel, walking past a frowning Wayzz and a nervous Nooroo. He did not look at his unwelcome visitor. Instead, he stopped before the cabinet, right in front of an old gramophone. He put a hand on the crank but did not turn it.

"I wish I could give you what you are looking for," he said, "I really do. If it was at all possible, I-"

Gabriel threw the phonograph off the cabinet. It flew halfway through the room and smashed into pieces when it hit the floor.

"Did you even  _ try? _ " he yelled. "Did you even  _ try _ to help her, or did you just tell Duusu to let go? Don't give me your platit-"

He noticed what was lying between the pieces of the shattered gramophone, a wooden box covered in intricate patterns, which he had seen once before. He had designed a pendant inspired by it, years before. Instead of racing to grab it, he stood paralyzed, feeling like his muscles had turned into cotton wool.

Fu was unfazed. He walked to the jewelry box and picked it up, brushing imaginary dust off it.

"Maybe you should ask Duusu instead," he suggested. "She is quite concerned about you."

Gabriel said nothing.

Duusu would give him answers he did not want to hear.

Fu opened the box all the same. He picked the Peacock Miraculous up, but did not activate it. The first summon always took intent. The Miraculous were a little more lenient if a Kwami was awake but, for the most part, you had to will the Kwami into the human world.

Gabriel clenched his teeth.

"I asked  _ you _ . Did you  _ try? _ "

Fu lowered his eyes, not in guilt but in resignation.

"Do you believe me that jaded that I would not?" he replied. "I did. It was pointless. Duusu would have given all of herself to Adele, down to the last drop of magic, and it wouldn't have been enough."

"You had Ladybug's Miraculous!" Gabriel shouted. "You had the Black Cat's! There was no limit to your options!"

Fu pursed his lips.

"I was given the Miraculous to protect them, not to squander their gifts over a single soul, no matter how deserving. I  _ could _ have brought her back, but the reward was not worth the cost. We need miracles more than we need heroes."

Gabriel saw red. Then he saw pink, when Nooroo dashed to him with a distressed squeak and bumped against his chest. The Kwami hovered in front of his face, frantic.

"Let's leave," he begged. "Please. There's nothing good for you here."

His master considered grabbing Fu and bashing his skull against the floor until there was nothing left of him but blood and bones.

He closed his eyes, opened them again and stormed to the door. He stopped under it and turned to the Guardian.

"Take the ring back from my son," he snapped. "Take it back, or I will."

He walked away.

 

###

 

When you were so overwhelmed by rage that your thoughts turned to incoherent screams, there was little you could do to keep a hold of yourself other than remember the steps of a normal day and strictly follow them.

_ Not worth the cost. _

Wake up.

_ Not. Worth. The. COST. _

Get out of bed.

_ She gave her LIFE for... _

Get a shower.

_ … your own damn fault! _

Get dressed.

_ Maybe if you had paid ATTENTION to Adrien and his friends... _

Get out of your bedroom and into your office.

_ Right under your nose. _

Prepare for the day.

Gabriel was collecting documents into his briefcase - thinking of magical explosions and bodies turned to dust and ghosts fading into nothing in the emptiness of the quantic realm - when someone knocked on the door. He turned, but answering did not even occur to him. Instead, he watched the door creep open. Adrien peeked into the room.

"Father? Good morning. I'm not disturbing you, am I?"

It took a moment for Gabriel to even comprehend his son's words. His mind had gone blank. He needed a few more seconds to find an answer.

"No," he replied, looking down at his briefcase. "I was just about to leave."

The boy took that as an encouragement. He slipped into the room and stopped next to the door, awkwardly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"I was wondering… if that's okay with you… could I come to the office with you today? Please?"

Gabriel stared at the piles of paperwork Nathalie had prepared on the table. Adrien had no photo shoots planned. As a matter of fact, it was Saturday. He had nothing planned at all.

The boy inched closer to the table.

"I mean, um, I normally wouldn't ask," he explain, scratching the back of his neck and staring at his shoes, "but Marinette will be there, and, uh,..."

His father stilled. The mere word felt like a punch to the stomach. Hatred burst through him and roared in his mind - no thoughts, no words, just deafening, silent _screams._ He grabbed some documents at random - printouts from the new collection's ad campaign - and slammed them on the table to align the sheets, then carefully put them in his bag.

Adrien hesitated but wouldn't be deterred.

"Jagged Stone is meeting her at nine, and I thought I could, you know, join them. Not  _ disturb _ them, of course."

"Adrien, now is not the time," Gabriel warned.

The  _ last _ thing he wanted to hear about was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. 

He knew he should have laid the blame where it belonged - at his own feet - but he still loathed Ladybug. Every single one of her victories had come at the cost of shreds of Adele's soul. He felt like the girl was taunting him by merely  _ existing _ . So did Chat Noir, for that matter.

He took a folder and flipped through it. His son faltered.

"I wouldn't bother you  _ much _ ," he said, in a barely audible voice. "I just need a drive there and then I'll just find Marinette and be out of your-"

"WILL YOU BE  _ QUIET _ ?" Gabriel yelled; slamming his briefcase on the table. "I do not have the  _ time _ to hear you ramble about your girlfriend. Ask  _ Nathalie. _ "

Instead of recoiling, Adrien went utterly still. He sucked his cheeks him and chewed down on them, looking not subdued but resentful. He balled his fists.

"What happened  _ now? _ " he spat.

Gabriel frowned.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What happened  _ now? _ You were fine yesterday! So  _ what happened? _ "

His father pictured Marinette Dupain-Cheng fawning over the boy, her giddy awkwardness, and then he remembered Ladybug's defiance.

"Watch your tone."

"Can't you just spend one day,  _ one day _ NOT depressed? Can't you just TRY?" Adrien yelled. "Don't you get  _ tired _ of being miserable?"

That blow landed. Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back. He did not let his guilt show.

"I believe that's enough."

"You believe that's enough.  _ You believe that's enough, _ " Adrien repeated, in stunned fury. "Of  _ course _ you do. Everything is always about  _ you _ ."

He whirled and left, slamming the door behind him.

 

###

 

"Please, please, please apologize," Nooroo implored Gabriel as he drove his Mercedes into the mansion's garage, after a long and unproductive day of work.

The Kwami had been trying to mellow him out since the morning, which would likely have worked if reason could still appeal to Gabriel. As things stood, he could barely think and did his best not to  _ feel. _ Nooroo's voice was little more than background noise. He was too exhausted to give the creature any attention.

His rage had burned bright and faded all at once, consuming all of his energy. All he planned to do was crawl to his bedroom and be done with the entire day.

Apologies would wait.

He knew Adrien was alive and well. The boy had stormed out of the house after their argument and ignored all of Nathalie's calls and texts, which had left her in a state of barely concealed panic. Gabriel had let her search for his son and gone to work, figuring Chat Noir was roaming the city and would resurface once calmed down. Two hours later, he had learned from his own employees that Adrien was in the workshop with the Dupain-Cheng girl and Jagged Stone. It hadn't been much of a surprise.

Gabriel had  _ not _ joined them in the workshop, nor had he acknowledged the teenagers' presence, except by sending a text message to Nathalie to let her know the boy had been found. He knew she had collected him later on.

She had heavily suggested a father and son heart-to-heart.

It would wait.

He dragged himself out of the car, pocketing the keys, then climbed the stairs to the hallway. He expected to find the house deadly silent, as it always was. Instead, he heard guitar. Guitar and  _ singing. _

"Goddamnit," he murmured, closing the garage door behind him.

He had managed to go a full decade without having to listen to Jonathan's singing (which was no small feat in a world where the man was; against all odds,  a superstar). He hadn't missed it. The sentence he had used the most in his life had to be 'Jonathan, please shut up, I am begging you'.

Jonathan's singing came from upstairs and was echoed by Adrien's, who clearly took after his mother on the singing front. She had  _ loved _ singing. Much like for cooking, she had been born with endless passion and a total absence of skill.

Gabriel tried to recognize the melody. He remembered it, which meant it had to be from Jonathan's old demos, or worse: his first albums. Album number one had been about sex, album number two about cocaïne. Their lyrics were absolutely not suitable for children (logic dictated that Adrien, being sixteen, was somewhat knowledgeable about one of those two topics, but Gabriel preferred to pretend otherwise).

He hurried upstairs and found Adrien's door ajar. From the stairs landing, the singing was loud enough for Gabriel to recognize the lyrics.

_ "At the moment that I hit the stage, I hear the universe calling my name, and I know deep down in my heart I have nothing to fear." _

Thank god, it was a cover.

Gabriel slipped into the room unnoticed.

Jonathan and Adrien were sitting on the sofa, with with the musician playing the guitar while the boy drummed on the armrest.

_ "And as the s-solar wind blows through my HAIR _ ," Adrien croaked,  _ "knowING I have… much MORE left to share…" _

It was marginally better than his performance while mind-controlled by Princess Fragrance. Marginally.

Jagged Stone took over.

_ "A wandering spirit- _ "

He noticed Gabriel and stopped, then grinned.

"Come on, Gabe, you know that one."

Adrien tensed, joy deserting him and leaving only tension in its place. Of course, Jonathan remained oblivious. Judging by his looks and posture, he was as high as the international space station. It was probably for the best. If one thing was more terrible than Jagged Stone's singing voice, it was his temper.

He played the same few notes over and over again.

"A wandering spirit…" he tried, before starting over. "A wandering spirit who's… No? Nothing?"

"I'm afraid I do not remember the lyrics," Gabriel lied.

"Aw," Jonathan sighed. He put the guitar away and turned to Adrien. "You might not know that, but your dad has a better singing voice than I do."

The boy frowned.

"Which isn't much of an accomplishment," his father murmured under his breath.

"I heard that," Jonathan commented. "And I was just being nice. What I meant to say is that, if he put years of lessons and practice into it, he'd probably manage to be a decent one-hit-wonder. Maybe even top of the charts for a while. Now, 'best selling album' is a stretch."

Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Jonathan, why are you here?"

"I'll get snacks," Adrien exclaimed, dashing past his father and fleeing out of his own room.

The mood changed instantly. Jonathan sighed.

"Do you have to be a jerk to that kid? Do you? Jesus Christ, Gabe, what the  _ hell _ have you done to him?"

Gabriel pursed his lips. His friend stood, grabbing his guitar and putting it back into the gig bag that had been laying on the floor up to that point.

"He showed up wearing make up, just so you know. So we couldn't see he'd been bawling his eyes out. I hope whatever you argued about was worth it."

He had none of Nathalie's subtlety or of Nooroo's gentleness. He would yell, and then yell louder, and keep doing so well past winning the argument. There was no point defending yourself, especially not when what you had done was indefensible.

Gabriel debated on which response to give. There had to be something that would make Jonathan shut up.

He couldn't come up with anything.

Jonathan slammed the gig bag on the door. The guitar made an ominous, resounding noise that seemed to indicate a premature death. It got a cringe out of the rock star but wasn't enough to distract him from his original point.

He whirled to Gabriel.

"Seriously?  _ Seriously? _ " he exclaimed, gesturing and crossing the room to join him. "That kid is the  _ nicest _ ,  _ how _ can you be  _ fucking it up? _ "

He punctuated his words by smacking his palm against Gabriel's ribs. The blond pulled back.

"Drop it," he sighed, knowing he was in the wrong.

"Adele would  _ kill _ you, do you know that?" Jonathan yelled back.

It was the last thing Gabriel needed to hear.

"With all due respect,  _ mind your own business.  _ You have  _ no clue _ of what is going on."

His friend gaped at him, then exploded.

"I don't  _ need _ to!" he shouted, gesturing at the portrait of Adele on the wall, then at the dozens of photographs of her that littered the room. "Just  _ look _ .  _ LOOK! _ "

Gabriel grimaced and ran his hands over his face. He took an instant to compose himself and adjusted the glasses he had pushed out of the way.

"Maybe we should move this discussion to the living room," he coolly suggested. "We would have more privacy."

Of course, Jonathan would have none of it.

"I. said. LOOK!" he snapped, grabbing Gabriel by the shoulder and forcing him to turn towards a wall of pictures of Adele.

He waited, fingers digging into the blond's muscles.

"Is it sinking in yet?" he asked.

Gabriel clenched his teeth and freed himself. He smoothed his jacket, adjusted his tie and straightened his back.

"Once again, we should take it elsewhere. I'm sure Adrien would appreciate getting his room back," he said, before walking out.

Jonathan stomped after him.

"If you think I'm  _ done _ -"

They both froze. Adrien was standing on the stairs landing, with none of the snacks he had left to retrieve. How long had he been eavesdropping?

Gabriel tensed. He ran his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to come up with an olive branch, or at least something that would not make the situation worse. Of course, a true conversation would have to wait for their guest to leave.

"Adrien. Please join me join me after Jonathan is gone. I'd like to have a talk with you," he said. He winced when Nooroo poked him from the inside of his pocket. "And I am  _ deeply _ sorry about this morning."

His son pursed his lips. He seemed to consider his answer carefully, and his expression grew colder and colder as he made up his mind.

"No I won't," he announced, climbing the rest of the stairs and walking past his father to get to his room. "And I don't  _ care. _ "

Once again, he slammed the door.

Gabriel lowered his head.

A moment went by. Jonathan put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Deciding that wasn't sufficient, he wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He leaned against him.

"Next time, maybe just take the opening and sing," he softly commented.

Gabriel massaged the bridge of his nose and pressed on the corners of his eyes.

"Please go," he murmured.

 

###

 

The first knock on Adrien's door went unanswered, so Gabriel tried again.

He thought the boy was there. He had kept an eye on the security feed for the best part of the evening and spotted nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, Adrien was an escape artist. He knew how to avoid being caught on film. Still, Gabriel had looked for strange shadows and unusual behavior from the passerby.

He knocked a third time.

There was no answer. Gabriel didn't hear the slightest noise from inside Adrien's room, and started to doubt his surveillance efforts. He let out a sigh and tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge. He tried again - he couldn't quite believe that Adrien had blocked it - but it bumped on something on the other side. That something did not move, so it had to be the heaviest piece of furniture Adrien had been able to push across his room.

Gabriel took a deep breath.

"Adrien.  _ Please _ open the door," he asked.

He heard stomping. Relieved, he stepped back and waited for the door to open, but that did not happen. Instead, Adrien started playing music. Loudly.

For just an instant, he felt like the normal father of a normal teenager in a normal house: extremely irritated. He banged on the door, just one.

"Adrien Olivier Agreste, open the door  _ this instant _ ."

"Go. Away!"

Yes, it absolutely felt like normal family dynamics.

"I will  _ not _ leave until you open this door."

This time, there was no comeback. Silence fell. Gabriel frowned and gave the door another shove. Then a sheet of solid steel fell down and covered it. He heard the loud sliding of dozen of metallic curtains sliding over every single window and door. The house trembled when they simultaneously hit the floor.

Gabriel mouthed a silent ' _ what? _ '. Nooroo zipped out of his pocket and looked around, eyes wide.

"Well…" he whispered.

His master stared at the steel wall in front of him. The security system could be triggered from his computer, downstairs, but also from Adrien's, from Gabriel's own phone and from Nathalie's tablet. It was safer this way: if one room was compromised, you could  _ at least _ retreat into another one. You still needed a fingerprint scan to activate it, of course. Gabriel - Jackady incident aside - had been mostly satisfied by the system.

He was a man who rarely changed his mind but his son sure endeavoured to give him good reasons to do so. That security system would be dismantled by the end of the week.

"Now this is just childish!" he yelled.

Inside Adrien's bedroom, the heavy metal music grew louder. Gabriel gave up. Running a hand over his face, he made his way to his own room. He unlocked the door with his phone and a sixteen digits passcode, then slipped inside and sat on the corner of his bed.

Nooroo flew to him and sat by his side. He looked ridiculous with his tiny body, large head and overly serious expression. Gabriel chuckled, without mirth, then shook his head.

"I can't fix this," he admitted.

The kwami tilted his head to the side and thought about it.

"No. No, you can't," he replied.

His master buried his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, and said nothing.

Nooroo sighed and flew up, landing on his shoulder.

"But it should occur to you that you are attempting to fix the wrong thing."

Gabriel moved his hands down to uncover his eyes and peeked at his shoulder. Nooroo jumped away and hovered at arm's length.

"This has been a long time in the making," he explained, "but I think you know that. This is a problem that stems from another that stems from another that stems from… well…"

"Me."

Nooroo did not comment, but did not correct him either.

Silence fell. Gabriel massaged his own face and stared into the distance. He understood only too well that he could not merely fix the symptoms, could no  _ longer _ merely fix the symptoms, when the root of all of them was that he did not know how to fix himself.

_ Don't you get tired of being miserable? _

He wasn't even sure there was an answer to that. He had never quite questioned his own feelings. Weren't they logical? He was the sum of his losses and his failures.

They weighed on Adrien more than they did on him.

"What should I  _ do? _ " he murmured.

He genuinely did not know. He had been playing pretend, making sure to be more present, to be more available, but it had all been an elaborate trick to get Adrien to feel better. Underneath it all, Gabriel was still drowning.

"You need to  _ move on _ ," Nooroo replied. 

_ Easier said than done. _

The Kwami followed his train of thought. He sighed.

"You need to find some kind of anchor, Gabriel. You have nothing to hold on to, so  _ of course _ every shock has you reeling. And you can't find refuge in your work either. What you need is not something that will keep you occupied. It's something that will keep you  _ happy. _ "

_ Easier said than done, _ Gabriel thought again.

He sighed.

He nodded.

 

###

 

Gabriel tapped the tip of his pencil against his sketchbook, over and over again.

The page was blank. It was no surprise. He hadn't designed a single decent outfit in two years, not even a half-decent one. His last four collections had been unmitigated disaster. Had they sold? Yes. Had they been criticized? Somewhat, though not as much as he believed the hasty, uninspired creations deserved. If he had been asked about his recent work, he would have answered 'I suppose Climatika's costume had a good color scheme'.

He did not feel like drawing at all.

"I thought you had agreed on work not being the solution," Nooroo sighed.

Gabriel shook his head.

"This is not work," he replied. "It wasn't. It used to be my outlet."

It didn't feel like one anymore, not because it had become a job but because every single ounce of creativity had been drained out of him. Once upon a time, he had been plagued with so many ideas he had been frustrated not to be able to have them all produced. Now…

Nooroo landed on the corner of the sketchbook, mournfully staring at the blank page.

"Is there anything  _ else _ you like?"

Gabriel put the pencil down.

"I should go see if Adrien is up and if he has calmed down," he murmured.

The house was no longer on lockdown, courtesy of Nathalie who had arrived early in the morning and woken Gabriel from his restless sleep with a calmly frantic phone call. Her voice had been perfectly flat when she had asked him if he was safe. She had also been hyperventilating.

In the end, she had the place back to normal in the time it had taken Gabriel to get dressed. He had left her in his office and retreated to his study, figuring that it was more than time to take Nooroo's advice. 'Hold on to something'. 

Art should have been the easy option.

"Nooroo. I now realize I never asked if you could do that - and it should definitely have occurred to me earlier - but would you be able to check on him without being noticed?"

The Kwami's eyes went wide.

"Um."

"I take it that's a no?"

"Plagg is a  _ cat _ . There is little he reacts to, but there is also little he doesn't notice."

Gabriel froze, startled.  _ That _ was a worrying prospect. Nooroo had been exceedingly careful about remaining hidden but, for the longest time, they had not been aware there was another Kwami in the house, let alone a feline. Granted, Gabriel had kept the butterfly in the brooch for long stretches of time, but not always. How often had Plagg and Nooroo been in the same room, poorly hidden in their masters' pockets?

He sucked his lips in.

"Is it at all possible that he noticed you  _ already? _ " he asked, in the same ominous voice he would have used to announce an unavoidable catastrophe.

Nooroo shifted in unease.

"I… am not… sure," he muttered, looking away.

Gabriel frowned. Clearly, his Kwami did not want to deliver bad news.

" _ Nooroo. _ Could he, or could he not, have noticed you?"

The small god hesitated, trying to delay, then giving up.

"It's a moot point. If the Guardian knows who you are, then so does Plagg."

Blind rage washed over Gabriel.

There was  _ really _ no limit to the hatred he felt for Fu. None. The more layers you peeled, the more you realized just how calculating the man was. The children would never see through it, of course. Adele hadn't, at their age. Fu was old and frail and serene and affable. He distracted you with half-truths and stories of old. He clouded himself in mystery so you wouldn't see him move his pawns.

You found out the hard way how chess players dealt with the loss of a pawn.

Gabriel ran his hands over his face.

"Master,  _ please _ ," Nooroo implored.

He flew up and circled Gabriel. He stopped inches over his shoulder but did not dare to land.

Gabriel stood and pushed his chair back under his desk, then walked out. He needed air. Actually, what he needed was to destroy something, but even his transformation did not grant him that. He couldn't just call upon the forces of misfortune and destruction to vaporize some random item, so a walk would have to do. He had to burn the rage out  _ somehow. _

He was halfway to the staircase when he felt Nooroo catch up with him and slip into his pocket.

He was halfway down the staircase when he spotted Adrien and Nathalie.

They were standing by the open front door. Adrien had one hand on the door handle.

"- not about you," he was telling Nathalie. "I'm sorry."

"I will ask him," she replied. "Now just-"

"Ask me what?" Gabriel cut in.

The two of them turned to him. Nathalie paled. Adrien glared.

"I'm going out," he announced.

_ Turn your tongue in your mouth seven times before speaking _ , his father told himself. He had to: if he had spoken, he would have eviscerated the boy. He ran the tip of this tongue against the roof of his mouth one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times then slowly breathed out.

"Out  _ where _ ?" he asked, perfectly composed.

"To see friends," Adrien replied, already stepping out.

" _ Which _ friends?" 

"Friends."

Gabriel stared him down.

"You are not leaving before you tell us who you will be with and where."

His son glared back. Slowly, deliberately, he leaned into the house to grab the doorknob, then pulled the door closed as he left.

Nathalie and Gabriel stared at each other. She was livid. He had gone past blind rage and straight into numbness. His ears were ringing. Neither of them addressed the fact that Adrien had just tested the theory that they could not, as a matter of fact, stop him from doing whatever he wanted.

Gabriel looked away from her and into the distance.

"Cut off his internet access," he said, figuring it was a punishment as good as any.

Then he stormed out of the house.

 

###

 

"Marinette is a terrible friend," Jagged Stone commented as he joined Adrien on the settee of the Grand Paris' lounge.

He was looking at Marinette, who was standing a few feet away and animatedly talking with miss Rolling. It was all about the show outfits, of course: Marinette visited the hotel every day to get updates on the clothes she had designed, and Jagged's assistant had snatched her the moment she and Adrien had arrived to discuss 'legal matters'. And payment.

It meant that she had totally abandoned Adrien, but he had expected that when he had offered to walk with her to the Grand Paris, after school.

He chuckled.

"She's not. I'm the one who insisted to tag along. I knew she would be working."

"Planning to take her on a date after she's done?" Jagged asked with a teasing smile.

Adrien blushed. He had heard that question before, from various well-meaning people, and he still did not get why it was their first assumption.

"No. No, we're just friends," he replied, having gone past the stuttering after the fifth time he had answered the question.

Jagged Stone gaped.

"Really?"

"Yes?"

The rock star raised his eyebrows and stared at Marinette, beyond surprised.

"Okay then. So, anything planned as friends, then?"

"Not really. I just live right next door, we were walking in the same direction."

Not that he had been meant to 'walk' in any direction. He was sure his bodyguard was having a fit, since it was the fifth day in a row Adrien had managed to escape him. The teenager had gotten out through a classroom window just to avoid the grey Mercedes parked in front of the school. The cold war with his father was still raging. Adrien made a point of fulfilling his actual obligations (he showed up for every photo shoot and every afterschool activity, mostly by racing across town as Chat Noir) but resolutely avoided both his caretakers and Gabriel. He disobeyed every direct order. As it turned out, his father's bark was worse than his bite: short of physically stopping Adrien from leaving the house, there was nothing he could do to enforce discipline. So far, his son had lost his internet privileges and the cables to his TV and video game consoles.

From his point of view, he was winning. Plagg sure seemed to think so.

Jagged Stone didn't answer. He just observed Marinette and miss Rolling, lost in thought. Adrien was more than happy to let the 'dating' conversation die. He couldn't just explain that there was already a girl he liked and that said girl was not Marinette.

After ten minutes or so, miss Rolling let Marinette go with a last 'I will keep you informed, thanks for coming', and Adrien's classmate ran to him and Jagged Stone to say goodbye.

"I really have to run, Mom is waiting for me," she told Adrien, with a nervous look at her phone. "I, uh, it was nice of you to come with me, I, uh…"

She thought he had been waiting for her. Oh.

He smiled.

"Yeah, I have to get home too. See you tomorrow."

She stuttered a response, said goodbye to Jagged Stone for a second time, and left. Adrien watched her go. Jagged Stone watched Adrien. The teenager stayed right where he was, sitting awkwardly in an hotel lobby where he was not supposed to be and pretending he had a reason to be there. Maybe he would wait for Chloé to come back from her yoga class and spend the evening with her.

"So, are you hiding from your dad?" Jagged Stone asked.

Adrien choked.

"I. Uh. What?"

"Are you hiding from Gabe? Not that I'd blame you, I hid from Gabe plenty of times in my life."

The boy opened and closed his mouth, then looked in every direction, then cleared his throat.

"No?"

Jagged Stone smiled and sighed, patting his head.

"Come on. Let's go upstairs, you can play with Fang for a little while."

Adrien's eyes went wide. He was not sure if playing with a crocodile was insane, awesome or both. He decided that it was probably a little less insane and a little less awesome than playing with a  _ dragon. _

"Um. If I'm not going to disturb you or anything…"

"He could use a bubble bath."

"Oh. Oh. Okay then?" Adrien replied, wondering what he had signed up for.

Jagged Stone had already turned away to call miss Rolling, and was giving her a list of mandatory equipment: hypoallergenic coconut scented soap, a fresh broom, three natural sponges and a jug of warm cocoa (black chocolate and honey, not lavender honey but acacia and 'not the store brand').

Thirty minutes later, Adrien understood exactly what he had signed up for: the flu. He was soaked, he was cold and he smelled like a swampy coconut. Fang, on the other hand, was happy as a clam. He was also dry and warm, and trampled out of the bathroom to join Jagged Stone, who was playing the guitar on a sofa.

Adrien removed his shoes, dried his feet and tiptoed to the rock star. He hoped he wasn't ruining the carpet with his dripping pants.

Jagged barely noticed him. He opened his arms to the crocodile, who climbed on his lap and let himself be petted.

"Who's a good boy?" the rock star crooned. "Yes you are. Yes! A really clean good boy!"

Adrien sneezed.  _ That  _ did get Jagged's attention.

"PENNY!" he exclaimed. "Get the boy some dry clothes!"

He got no answer because his assistant was not around. He wrinkled his nose, seeming to take that as a personal affront.

"Fine, fine," he muttered, gently pushing Fang off his lap. He stood and walked to the wardrobe, then handed Adrien a pair of black and white pants (with sequins) and a black shirt (with lace). "This should fit. Mostly."

Adrien had worn worse. He thanked him and ran back to the bathroom to change, neatly folding his wet clothes and putting his shoes on the heater to dry them off. When he returned to the main room, Jagged was waiting for him, seated on the sofa with his electric guitar, which was plugged to a mini amp.

"Perfect!" he exclaimed. He patted the seat next to his. "Now come on, I need an opinion on my new song."

The teenager joined him, grinning. Not everyone was offered a chance to listen to Jagged Stone's new works. He tried not to look too giddy.

Jagged smirked, played a few chords, then started a brilliant riff that had Adrien fall in love in twenty seconds, tops. Then, the musician started  _ singing _ , and it got better. 'I was flying over Paris on a dragon's back, I was hunting, I was roaming, I was right on track!'. Adrien's jaw dropped and he nearly laughed. It was a song about  _ Guitar Villain _ . Jagged Stone had written a song about  _ Guitar Villain. _

He leaned closer and listened intently, waiting for mentions of Ladybug and Chat Noir. The 'dashing, daring, dazzling heroine' and the 'black-clad black cat hero' 'zeroed in' by the third verse, at which point Adrien was basically bouncing into place with excitement. The song ended soon after that, and Jagged smiled at him.

"So what do you-"

"It's  _ great _ ! It's amazing! It's even better than the Miraculous song you played at your last show. I… I mean, I love it," Adrien finished, blushing and scratching the back of his neck.

Maybe he was overreacting a little.

"HA! Wait until I tell Penny. She said the lyrics were a little 'conventional'."

"Er… She  _ did? _ "

Jagged crossed his arms.

"She did. Sometimes, she can  _ really _ get in the way of my talent. I have been writing songs for  _ decades _ . I know what I am doing. And anyway it's about  _ flying over Paris on a dragon! _ What's conventional about that?"

"Um," Adrien replied, endeavouring to sound as noncommittal as possible.

The rock star was sulking.

"I  _ figure _ I can make some adaptations. Maybe in the second verse. What do you think?"

"I, um, I think you know b-"

"Let me try again," Jagged Stone cut in.

He tried again. He changed three words. In the next iteration, he changed two. In the  _ next _ , he cut the 'black-clad black cat line', which did disappoint his captive audience. In the end, he decided the original version was the best. Adrien vehemently agreed, mostly because his ears were ringing.

Jagged Stone put his guitar away.

"Thanks again. I gotta say you're a much better listener than your dad."

"You don't say," Plagg murmured.

"I… He's not always very patient," Adrien commented.

Jagged dropped back onto the sofa and laughed.

"That's a way to put it."

The teenager gave him a shy smile. He wasn't quite sure how to continue that conversation. Thankfully, Jagged Stone did not criticize Gabriel further. Adrien relaxed.

"I've been meaning to ask. Were you  _ really _ friends with my father? It seems… unlikely. How did it happen?"

Jagged snorted, amused.

"It  _ does _ sound weird, doesn't it?" He smiled. "Gabriel spoke English."

"Um. What?"

"He spoke English. That's about it."

Adrien stared at him, blinking and trying to make sense of the explanation. Jagged stretched and leaned back in his seat.

"My mother dragged me to France for her new job - she was a singer too, we moved a lot - and then she parked me in a school. I didn't speak a word of French. Not one. Not even 'bon appétit'. So the teachers had me sit with the  _ one _ kid who was fluent in my language."

"And it went… well?"

"Are you kidding me? Gabe hated my guts. Gabe hates everyone."

Adrien couldn't help but gape some more. Jagged Stone grinned.

"But here's the trick: if you're persistent enough, he'll eventually stop grumbling and start enjoying himself. You just have to weather the storm. To grow on him. Like that green plant thing that grows on trees and kills them."

"Fungus?"

"No. The leafy thing."

He gestured, drawing zig-zags in the air with one finger.

"Ivy?" Adrien suggested.

"Yes! That's the trick. You cling to him like ivy until he gets used to you."

The teenager tried to imagine a scenario where his father did not end up murdering a person trying that strategy. He couldn't picture it. Of course, he was attempting something similar by plainly refusing to obey Gabriel, but he was  _ family. _

"It seems like it would take a lot of, uh, energy," he commented.

"Well, I couldn't speak French, so what else was I gonna do?"

"Um."

"And anyway, having Gabriel as a friend was  _ great _ . I looked three-hundred percent more likable next to him."

If Adrien's eyes had gone any more wide, they would have fallen out. Realizing his jaw was drooping, he closed his mouth and swallowed. He kept staring at Jagged Stone. The man chuckled.

"But we got along," he continued. "Even  _ after  _ I learned some French. HEY! Wanna see pictures?"

He jumped off the sofa and ran to the bed, shaking the covers to find something, sighing when the search turned up nothing, and then looking through every nightstand drawer. He retrieved a tablet from the third one and came back to the sofa.

"I have tons," he announced, sitting next to Adrien and leaning closer to him. "Had my housekeeper find the albums and scan them, I figured I'd see you again."

He tapped icons and swiped left and right (zipping past what was undeniably a picture of himself drunk and naked, which Adrien tried to unsee) until he found a folder called 'collège'.

"Ready? There could be some compromising material," said the man who had just accidentally flashed his naked backside to a teenager.

Adrien nodded. He did not know much about his father's teenage years. He knew that was when he had met his mother. They had plenty of photographs of a young Adele, but Gabriel was on none of them because he had been holding the camera. She had often talked about modeling for him, when he was just starting out and could not afford anyone else, but the topic of Jagged Stone had never quite come up. Well, now that he thought about it, Adrien remembered a few 'with his friend Jonathan' dropped there and there, but he had never connected the dots.

He was curious.

The first image Jagged Stone showed him was a class photo. Three rows of students in bleak uniforms were staring at the camera. One of them stood out, with his long, messy black hair and large grin. Adrien couldn't find Gabriel at all.

"That's me," Jagged announced, pointing at himself. He moved his finger to the left. "And your dad is right there."

Adrien blinked at the faded picture of a sullen boy with longish ash blond hair and - more importantly - no glasses, but Jagged moved on to the next picture before he could really focus. That one was a polaroid image of teenage Jagged sitting on a bench in a schoolyard, playing an acoustic guitar. The next one had him playing  _ and _ singing. In the one after that, Gabriel was sitting next to him. Young Jagged had wrapped an arm around his shoulders to keep him from running, which seemed to be Gabriel's intention. You couldn't see his eyes (the flash of the camera had hit his glasses and made them opaque) but his body language was clear enough.

The boy felt himself smile.

"So I don't have that many pictures of him," Jagged revealed. "Trying to get Gabriel in front of a camera is like trying to get a cat into a swimming pool. He liked to take them, though. 'Practice'. Back when he was starting out, he couldn't afford to pay for professional photographers, so he made do."

"Really?" Adrien asked, surprised.

The Agreste were an old family with old money. In all logic, Gabriel could have afforded everything he wanted.

"Oh yes. Your grandpa was a real hardass. Heard the word 'fashion' and told your father it was business school or nothing. Cut off his allowance and all, told him if he wanted to make dresses, he could find the money himself. Spoilers: your father did."

"I didn't know that," Adrien replied, already distracted: Jagged was swiping from picture to picture, skipping the ones where he was alone (or merely swarmed by teenage girls).

His heart nearly stopped when he spotted his mother on one of the images Jagged had discarded.

"Wait, wait, go back!"

The rock star cringed, but did go back, at which point Adrien realized why he had skipped the picture. For a start, Adele was holding a bottle of beer at the camera. Underage drinking was definitely something one's parents tried to keep hidden. On top of that, young Jagged's arm was firmly wrapped around Adele's waist.

"You dated my mom," Adrien stated. "You  _ dated my mom. _ "

Jagged winced.

"For a whole.  _ Ten. Minutes. _ Then your jackass of a father stole her from me. It's a sore topic."

The teenager stared at him in disbelief. The man just glowered at the picture.

"Trust me," he muttered, "the last thing you want to hear your date say when you arrive at a party is 'who is that cute boy?'."

Adrien tried to swallow a chuckle and ended up coughing and laughing all at once. Why had he never heard those stories? He wished his parents could have shared a little more.

Jagged snorted.

"But I guess she introduced me to her hot bestie and my evening ended well, soooo, I'm not  _ that _ annoyed. And she did marry the guy. There's that."

He was smiling, so Adrien smiled back.

"I didn't know that."

Jagged leaned close to his ear and whispered 'I know  _ everything _ '. Then he pulled back and dropped his tablet on the boy's knees.

"The secret is out," he commented. "Have fun browsing. I'm gonna go back to composing for a while."

"Thank you so much!"

Jagged Stone collected an acoustic guitar from a cupboard then collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling, plucking the strings every now and then.

Meanwhile, Adrien was flipping from image to image. As expected, Gabriel was missing from most of them, and Adele was even less present, but it was good to get glimpses of their younger selves. In the span of ten minutes, he discovered that his mother liked Indochine (enough to wear one of their tour T-shirts), and that Gabriel was ticklish and could play the piano. He still had five hundreds pictures to go through when someone knocked on the door.

"Peeeeennyyy, someone is knocking," Jagged called.

Then he realized (once again) that his assistant wasn't there. He grumbled, shoved his guitar aside and went to open the door. Fang trotted after him.

The newcomer was Nathalie.

She greeted Jagged with her usual detachment, politely asking if Adrien was there, then she peeked inside the hotel room and saw him. Her expression flickered between worry and indifference. Jagged waved her in. She did not need a verbal invitation.

"Adrien!" she exclaimed, walking to him. "You simply  _ cannot _ disappear like this! We have been looking for you for hours.  _ Thankfully, _ Miss Rolling was kind enough to give me a call, because I was considering calling the police."

He sighed, turning the tablet off and leaving it on the seat.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, even if he was not. Not really. Not entirely, anyway: he hated that Nathalie had been worried for him, but he did not regret escaping his father for an hour or two. 

He fetched his clothes and wet shoes from the bathroom, collected his school bag, and joined Nathalie, who looked at his state with the slightest frown. She did not comment. He supposed she would let his father handle the blame and punishment.

"Goodbye, Jagged," he said. "Thank you for showing me the pictures."

"I'll upload them for you," the rockstar promised. "I'll get your email from Marinette!"

Adrien gave him a weak smile and nodded, then walked out. Nathalie caught up with him a few minutes later.

 

###

 

By week four, day two of the cold war, Gabriel had grown accustomed to taking long, leisurely breakfasts alone. They lasted roughly from the second Adrien was supposed to wake up to the time he left for school. So far, Adrien had preferred starving himself to facing his father. Gabriel was not about to back down and forgive his disobedience, however, so he waited for the boy to break. In the meantime, Nooroo got to enjoy his own private jar of honey each morning.

The distance with Adrien and the petty, trivial nature of the entire argument helped with Gabriel's inner turmoil. A rebelling teenager was such a mundane problem that the proper actions to take were well-defined. Parenting painted by numbers, and simple issues to focus on.

He was still happy to see his son walk into the dining room on that Sunday morning, with a tablet under his arm and a decided expression.

The boy sat on Gabriel's left side, then moved his chair closer to his father.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"Adrien, what a surprise."

The boy sucked his lips and cheeks in. He put the tablet on the table, between them, but did not look at it. Instead, he fidgeted and tilted it back and forth. Since he wouldn't talk, Gabriel took a slow sip of his coffee.

"Do you want your internet privileges back, maybe? Are you going to apologize for your behavior?" he asked, eyebrows so raised that his forehead was starting to hurt.

Adrien turned sulky.

"No."

"Well then."

The boy huffed. He looked down at his tablet, turned it on, and stared at the screen for a moment.

"You never told me you were in a band," he said.

Gabriel had to be exceedingly careful with his cup of coffee, which he slowly deposited back onto its saucer. Adrien turned the tablet to him to show him a photograph. His father recognized the occasion, if not the picture itself. It was set at Mrs. Stone's old place, in Jonathan's bedroom. Jonathan was sprawled on a pile of cushions, wearing his washed out  _ Flesh Curtains _ t-shirt and torn jeans. Of course, he had worn that outfit for a year, possibly without washing it, so it hardly helped pinpoint the day the picture had been taken. That being said, if the photograph existed and Gabriel was on it, it meant Adele had taken it. He still remembered her standing in the doorway with her disposable kodak camera. She had been teasing him so he would smile. It had not worked: young him, on the image, was frowning at the camera while playing the keyboard.

"I wasn't in a band," Gabriel replied. He did not need to wonder how Adrien had found the picture. "Jonathan merely needed someone to help him record a cover, and I played the piano."

"You  _ played the piano? _ " Adrien gasped.

Gabriel looked at him in confusion. How was that a surprise?

"Well, obviously."

"You never told me!"

"Adrien, I had an education roughly similar to yours. Of course, I played the piano. Your grandparents thought it was important."

The fact seemed to baffle Adrien, who looked at him as if he had grown a second head.

_ "Really?" _

Had the topic never come up? At all?

"Actually, your grandfather had me learn the violin. It lasted a year, then your grandmother could not bear the caterwauling anymore and flat out told him he would be hiring a piano teacher or a divorce lawyer, 'his choice'. And then I learned the piano."

Adrien listened to him with wide eyes, and it occurred to Gabriel that he scarcely ever discussed his parents. They had both died before Adrien's birth, and there had been little reason to ever mention them.

"She was standing right at the door," Gabriel explained, pointing at the entrance. He could still picture Elise's tantrum, the way she had waved her cigarette around while glaring at Olivier. "In an explosive mood. And then she left and slammed the door. Not unlike someone I know."

Adrien muttered something about slamming doors being deserved.

Gabriel took the tablet from his hands and looked at the photograph. They'd been so young. He spotted a microphone on the floor, and Jonathan's old tape recorder. His mother - being a singer herself - had quality equipment a room away, but still thought her son did not have the discipline necessary to make it in the music industry.

"The idiot kept everything, didn't he?" he mused, flipping to the next picture to find a younger version of himself fully focused on the keyboard.

Hopefully, unlike the photographs, the tapes hadn't survived. At that age, Gabriel had been fluent in English but not familiar with the slang, which explained how he had been tricked into recording covers of half of the Flesh Curtains' discography.

"He sent me MP3s too," Adrien announced.

Gabriel tried his best not to look as if he had swallowed a lemon.

"Of what?" he asked, outwardly unfazed. "I remember him recording three songs a day, so there would be material for his 'posthumous albums'."

"The ones where you sang!" Adrien chimed back, all good natured innocence and naivety, which meant he was not familiar with English slang either. "He was right, too. You had a good singing voice!"

Gabriel jumped on the opportunity to discuss his skills rather than the songs themselves. The last thing he needed was for the boy to give them his undivided attention and to memorize titles such as, say, 'pearl necklace'.

"Good, I don't know. Better than Jonathan's at that age? Without the shadow of a doubt. He still insisted on being  _ self-taught,  _ back then. He improved some when he finally got formal training."

Adrien stared at him.

"Father, he's a top-of-the-charts rockstar. He can sing."

Gabriel snorted.

"Father!" his son snapped, indignant.

"There is a lot more to his success than his voice. He is a great composer, he is a great showman, he has a knack for producing material that sells exceedingly well, but you will  _ never _ get me to say that he can sing."

He smiled as he said it, endlessly amused by Adrien's vexed expression. The boy couldn't even come up with a rejoinder.

Gabriel put the tablet between them and swiped to the next picture.

He appreciated the olive branch.

 

###

 

It came and went, like the tides.

Sometimes, Gabriel could sail through his day smoothly, without the shadow of an emotion to affect him, one way or another. Those were the good days. He would work - forms to fill, designs to approve, reports to review - then settle down with a book, or maybe just sleep. His sketchbooks turned empty, page after page torn out and crumpled and thrown away, but he could live with that. He had grown resigned to the absence of silhouettes both in his mind and on paper.

It was still better than to feel.

Some days, he wasn't that lucky. Some days, emotions were shaken out of him, shoved to the surface by an argument, by a memory, by a chance encounter with the  _ girl _ (he prepared himself for those, really, but he could be caught unaware). Some days, he just woke  _ feeling _ , and it wouldn't stop. He had to avoid the dining room and Adele's eyes. Nooroo knew better than to disturb him, and shied away. Nathalie kept silent. She waited it out. As for Adrien… Gabriel stayed clear of him. The lashing out, the cutting down, the tearing apart were best avoided.

He hated that turmoil, the blind rage, the excruciating pain, the suffocating guilt, whatever it was that swept over him, engulfed him and dragged him down into the abyss with no hope of surfacing.

He had always longed for control.

Not everything was bleak, of course. He could still find humor in small things, and joy in others. Nooroo made for a surprisingly pleasant conversationalist when asked about magic or history. Nathalie was - and would hopefully remain - a good and quiet companion with whom Gabriel shared the love of a job well done. Jonathan, as always, proved to be endearingly insufferable.

His relationship with Adrien came with the lowest lows and the highest highs. The boy would no longer accept distance, and led a war over it. He had lost all fear and adopted his mother's fiery temper, which suited him. He dared to rebel, but also to reach out.

On his good days, Gabriel thought it was an acceptable tradeoff.

He tried to have more good days than bad ones.

Tried.

 

###

 

Nooroo liked books. So did Gabriel, though he no longer had the time to read them. For years, he had kept them for long flights or road trips with poor cell reception. Now that he could no longer  _ draw _ , however, he filled his free time as he could. He had decided relaxing would help with his mood, and that pulling away from immediate problems -  _ Marinette 'Ladybug' Dupain-Cheng _ \- was the best course of action. What were imaginary worlds for, if not escape?

His Kwami had missed a century worth of novels and loved to spend the evening pouring over the contents of the library. Gabriel had watched him devour books twice his size, absorbed by Orwell's dystopias, and gasping and giggling over the silly romance stories Adele used to read.

His master found it harder to focus. He did not flip through the pages as fast as Nooroo did. As a matter of fact, he spent eternities staring into the distance and mulling over every single thing he had been trying to forget.

Sometimes, his reading reminded him of those precise issues.

Food for thought.

"Gabriel, are you alright?" Nooroo asked, after watching him stare into the distance for the best part of ten minutes.

Gabriel looked down at the the line that had snapped him out of his reading. Actually, the reading itself had been distracting. Some themes hit too close to home for the plot to keep his undivided attention.

"I am alright," he replied, sighing. "Tired, that's all."

Nooroo abandoned his copy of 'Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban' to come land on Gabriel's armchair. He peeked at his book.

"East of Eden?"

He had likely read that one: Gabriel had seen him with at least two of Steinbeck's books and guessed the Kwami would have checked all of the author's works, if available.

His master answered with a hum. He saw Nooroo scan the page and deflate.

_ "I don't want advice" _ , a character was saying, in dark serif font over yellowed paper, and did that not sound familiar?

The entire dialogue did.

_ "Nobody does. It's a giver's present. Go through the motions, Adam." _

_ "What motions?" _

_ "Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true." _

_ "Why should I?" Adam asked. _

Gabriel closed the book. Nooroo looked at him with sadness.

"Act out being alive," his chosen quoted. "Like a play." He paused. "How long is 'a long while', Nooroo?"

"It depends. You know that."

Gabriel put the book aside, leaned back into his seat and massaged the bridge of his nose.

"Haven't I been doing just that? Going through the motions?" He felt like it was  _ all _ he had done since he had returned the Miraculous to Fu. "Haven't I been  _ trying? _ "

"You have," Nooroo murmured.

"Then how long must I keep at it?"

"I don't know. Maybe you ought to change the motions before following them. There is more to living than what you are doing now."

Gabriel peered at him. He bit the inside of his cheek and mulled over that.

"Is there?"

"Of course there is."

 

###

 

"The sequins are all wrong!" Jonathan ranted, pushing a jacket prototype under Marinette Dupain-Cheng's nose. "We said  _ eminence _ purple, not byzantium! Non mais  _ regarde!  _ It won't work at ALL!"

The girl was pale as a sheet and taking step back after step back, while Jonathan kept rambling about byzantium purple and how it clashed with his hair. He went on to yell that the entire  _ outfit _ had to be redone, possibly within the hour, unless miss Dupain-Cheng wanted to be fired and to never have a future in the industry, EVER, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Adrien was watching the scene unfold from a chair a few feet away. He looked aghast.

Gabriel sipped on his coffee. He was surprised Jonathan had not pulled one of his tantrums earlier. Considering the children's reactions, they had never seen him blow up before. Miss Rolling had likely kept him in check up to that point. Now, however, she was AWOL, and all hell was breaking loose.

"Should I intervene?" Nathalie asked Gabriel.

Jonathan was, for all intents and purposes, a VIP. He was supposed to receive (undeserved) special treatment. You could not simply yell at him to shut up, even if it would have worked. One did not alienate the top-selling rock musician.

"There's no need," Gabriel replied, taking another sip of his coffee. "This will be a valuable lesson to the girl."

"TODAY!" Jonathan shouted. "And this is your LAST chance!"

Miss Dupain-Cheng nodded frantically and ran out, clutching the jacket against her chest. The byzantium purple sequins glimmered as she did. It took less than ten seconds for Adrien to follow her.

Gabriel turned to Nathalie.

"Go make sure the girl does nothing more than take the sequins out, and kindly inform her that when Jonathan says 'eminence purple', he means 'pantone 267'."

Then he took another sip of his coffee. It was rapidly cooling down in its plastic cup.

Nathalie nodded and left, leaving him alone with Jonathan in a workshop that all of the seamstresses had deserted long before. Jonathan huffed, then noticed Gabriel's presence, and beamed at him.

"Hey! Gabe!" he exclaimed, crossing the room and shedding all of his temper along the way. "I didn't see you come in! When did you arrive?"

"Roughly when you started ripping the little girl apart," Gabriel replied. "Fifteen minutes ago?"

Jonathan looked a bit embarrassed but shrugged it off, grunting.

"Well, she really messed up on the sequins. It wasn't what she had showed me."

The girl's sketches had been drawn in a notebook with mainstream markers. They hadn't showed anything representative of a final result.

" _ Well _ , that will teach you to hire professionals instead of kindergarteners."

Jonathan snorted and changed the topic.

"So how have you been?" he asked. "I don't know how we live a street apart and never see each other. That's crazy. We should catch up."

"Oh, I hear plenty about you," Gabriel commented. "Mostly through my son. He likes you a lot."

"He's a great kid!" his friend declared. Then he ran back to one of the mannequins. "Come see this. Marinette did a great job with the tailcoat design."

He had already forgotten his issues with the other jacket. Gabriel shook his head and rolled his eyes.

_ Don't forget what  _ you _ came for _ , he told himself.  _ The motions. _

"It's really neat. Look. Stretchy," Jonathan was explaining.

"So I heard."

Seeing that he wasn't getting the enthusiasm he wanted, his old friend moved away from the mannequin, but kept looking at it with great satisfaction.

"So, how long do you plan to stay in Paris?" Gabriel asked.

Jonathan peeked at him over his shoulder, then focused on the jacket again. He smoothed it.

"Until my album is finished. Seven, eight songs left to write and record, I guess? It's going well so far, too."

Gabriel nodded.

"I see. A few months, then."

"Something like that."

"Mmh."

Silence fell. Jonathan didn't seem to notice. He was happy fussing at his new toys.

Gabriel watched him for a while. He finished his coffee and discarded the cup. Then, he joined the other man, stopping by his side.

"Say. Have you been seeing someone, lately?"

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book quotes are from John Steinbeck's East of Eden. It's a great read.


	3. Lifeline

Jonathan could be exceedingly perceptive but, for the most part, he scarcely attended reality. He didn't overanalyze what was said to him. So, when he heard "Say. Have you been seeing someone, lately?", he did not catch the underlying intent.

Gabriel wondered if he should have stood closer, or maybe thrown in some physical contact.

"No, not really," Jonathan replied. "I mean, yeah, I mean… Sure, I 'see' a lot of people, but… You know me, right?"

He hadn't even turned. He was still fussing over the jacket and the mannequin.

"I do," Gabriel commented. He waited an instant. "Are you free tonight?"

_ There _ , the penny dropped. Jonathan whirled to him, gobsmacked. It was hard to see him so shocked, mostly because he was still coming down from all the drugs he had taken back in the nineties. Here, he struggled to form words.

"Uh. Ah. Er," he mumbled. "Uuuh."

Gabriel couldn't help himself: he rolled his eyes. Then, remembering he was not trying to start an argument, he gave the faintest smile.

"Are you?"

His friend - and prospective date - snapped out of it.

" _ Sorry! _ " he gasped, in English, getting the language wrong. "I mean 'sorry'. I thought for a second you... Nevermind. Misunderstood. Of course you wouldn't."

"No, no, I am  _ indeed _ asking you out. You misunderstood nothing."

Jonathan gaped. 

Gabriel sighed. It tended to happen, in their conversations. He had no patience and Jonathan's mind had always wandered and roamed through several continents before giving a straight answer. Sometimes, you couldn't get the straight answer, merely a stream of loosely connected ideas. It wasn't that he was  _ slow _ . He had many, many thoughts at once and they vanished at the speed of light.

"It's a simple question," he prompted. "Yes? No?"

"Holy shit," Jonathan blurted out.

Gabriel peered at him over the rim of his glasses. His friend gestured at him.

"Come on, Gabe. Give me a break. How was I supposed to expect this? I didn't even know you liked guys!"

"It's hardly sur-"

" _ You married your first girlfriend _ ," Jonathan cut in. "Where in that long  _ one point _ list of people you dated was I supposed to see you liked men?"

Gabriel thought about the barely longer list of people he had been interested in, and of exactly how little he had discussed his interest for the people on it.

"Alright, I see your point," he admitted. "Still. It's hardly a shattering revelation."

His friend stared at him in disbelief.

"We are straying from the point," Gabriel stated.

He had expected this to be so much simpler. It was a yes or no question. Jonathan had never been one to hesitate on the topic, either. He had dated  _ everyone _ \- boy, girl, whoever asked and seemed nice enough - and his advice on the topic had always been 'go for it, go, go, go'.

Even though it had been decades, Gabriel still remembered the way a teenage Jonathan had pushed him to flirt with Adele. He could picture the scene: the faint morning light that shone through translucent curtains in the Lenoir's living room, the mess of discarded gobelets and snacks bowls spread on every piece of furniture, the piles of shoes next to the sofa, the hungover teenagers sleeping on said sofa. He had ended up at that party because the Lenoir girl was blonde, tall and slender, and because he hoped to bribe her into modeling with the gift of three bottles of fine whiskey. He hadn't left.

In the morning, he had found himself gathering trash with Jonathan, crouching on the dirty floor, while Adele and two of her friends took care of the dishes in the kitchen. Most of the partiers had left during the night. The really drunk ones - or those who had tricked their parents into thinking they were safe at a respectable friend's place, like Adele - had slept over.

Gabriel had met her the previous evening.

"Come on, just ask her out already!" Jonathan had whispered to him as they shoved empty gobelets into trash bags.

It seemed to have escaped his notice that the circumstances of that first meeting had been quite unfavorable to romantic connections.

"What the… She's  _ your girlfriend, _ " the blond had protested, aghast.

"Not anymore."

"What do you mean, not anymore? When did you break up?"

"Yesterday evening? Didn't you see I was with Coralie for the whole party?"

"No. No, I did not. I remember you introducing me to your new girlfriend  _ Adele _ ."

"Oh. Yes. Nah. We broke up something like ten minutes later."

"You had  _ met _ ten minutes  _ earlier _ ."

Jonathan had waved his hand, dismissively, then resumed plucking his guitar.

"Ask. Her. Out."

"I'm not asking her out! Who says I  _ want _ to, anyway?"

"The look on your face when she said 'hi, I'm Adele'."

Gabriel had flushed, mortified. He could imagine the look on his face at that precise moment, because he had seen how every other boy looked at her. She was dazzling. There was no denying that. It didn't mean anything. For a start, he would not have dated a party girl, no matter how stunning she was. Adele had not struck him as serious enough (and her twenty minutes dates seemed to confirm that first impression). On top of that, he had complicated feelings about a masked vigilante going by the name 'Plume'. Not that he had shared that with his best friend.

"She's not my kind of girl."

"You won't know that until you talk to her." Jonathan had sang the rest of his sentence, playing the same three notes over and over again. "Ask. Her. Ouuut. Ask. Her. Ouuuut…

No, he had never been one to hesitate on the topic of dating.

Even if thirty years had gone by, Gabriel had not planned on him having  _ changed _ . It made the idiot's reaction to his proposal quite bothersome.

"I didn't mean to start a debate," he told the rockstar, sighing. "It was a simple question."

"Non, c'est pas… No, it's not!" Jonathan corrected himself. He groaned. "I can't French."

Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose.  _ The best-laid plans of mice and men… _

"Free food and sex, Jonathan. That's it." He switched to English. "Yes, no?"

" _ Why? _ "

By this point, it was Gabriel who was flabbergasted and frustrated to no end.

"What  _ kind  _ of question is that?" he snapped. "What do you  _ think? _ "

"I'm thinking ' _ why?' _ . Why  _ me _ , why you, what's your  _ angle _ , why now,  _ why? _ "

_ Because the idea of touching a stranger is revolting. _

Gabriel let out a weary sigh.

"Forget I asked. This was a mistake," he said, moving away and preparing to leave.

Jonathan put a hand on his shoulder as he turned away.

"Hey," he murmured. "I didn't say 'no'."

The blond stopped and looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

"Seriously, when have I ever turned down 'free food and sex'? I'm  _ all _ for it," Jonathan joked, grinning. The grin turned into a half-serious smile. He put his hand on Gabriel's hip. "It's just… It's not like you. Are you sure?"

Gabriel looked down at the hand on his hip. He felt nothing, save for a sudden awareness of the edge of his belt pressing against his skin. He looked up.

"When have I ever done anything I was not sure about?"

He saw the spark of enthusiasm on Jonathan's face. His friend grinned again, leaning slightly closer and keeping his hand right where it was.

"Pizza?" he suggested.

"Burgers," Gabriel corrected. "I found a small restaurant that specializes in them. High-quality meat, original recipes, …"

"We're going to 'Manatthan's burgers'?" Jonathan gasped, looking like a child who had received the keys to the candy store.

Of course he knew the place.

"Yes. Meet you there at eight?"

"Works for me."

 

###

 

There was a "big bad boy burger" on the menu so, obviously, Jonathan ordered it. It came as no surprise. There were enough hot peppers in the monstrosity to set fire to a small town, but he didn't mind. Jonathan didn't know what was good for him. He wouldn't have agreed to a date, otherwise.

"You know," the rocker said between two bites of his burger, "I'm glad we're on the same page. I mean, three times married, three times divorced, three times in rehab. Never again."

Gabriel snorted.

"You know, the fact that you got divorced thrice  _ might _ be related to the fact that you reached that total before the age of twenty-two. But, then again, what do I know?"

Jonathan grabbed his beer and took a long sip.

"Or maybe I'm just a free spirit who's better at singing about love than keeping it."

"That's surprisingly deep. Are you going to use that line as lyrics?"

"Already did. Two albums ago."

Gabriel smothered a chuckle.

"Did it sell?"

"The song or the album?"

The blond poured himself a second glass of Pinot. He had ordered a bottle for himself, since Jonathan was set on tasting strangely named beers.

"Both?"

"Top of the charts, baby! Well, the album. I think the song was a little too soft, it went unnoticed. I liked it, though. The piano intro was one of my best, and the lyrics  _ were _ great."

Gabriel drained half his glass then put it down.

"What was it about?"

Their friendship, as baffling as it was to the rest of the world,  _ worked _ . Sure, Gabriel had never  _ not _ complained about it. Sure, it only existed because, as a boy of fifteen, Jonathan couldn't have afforded to give up on the only student in their class who could understand his godawful accent. But there was a balance of sorts. Jonathan loved to talk; Gabriel loved not to. As the musician was enamored with the sound of his own voice and did not need to be  _ listened to _ , they got along superbly.

The song was about a breakup with some Australian dancer called Claire, was titled 'clarity' and had been covered by a cute twelve year old on youtube. Gabriel got to watch the video. By the end of it, he had emptied his third glass and ordered a second bottle of Pinot.

If their waitress was confused to have to wait on a strange man in a baseball cap who was wearing sunglasses inside at nine in the evening (Jonathan had come 'incognito'), she kept it to herself. Gabriel had prefered the appearance of propriety: there was no point giving potential paparazzi a reason to believe the meeting was anything but business-related. He had picked a charcoal suit - tailored but unbuttoned - over a freshly pressed white shirt. The lack of a waistcoat made him feel mildly uncomfortable, now that he thought about it.

"... still think Claire was 'the one who ran away'," Jonathan said as the waitress left, taking his empty beer glass with her. "I was pretty broken up. OH. By the way! I promised I'd teach your son the guitar."

"I'm sorry, what?"

Gabriel struggled to understand the link between a classical dancer and his son. Maybe Claire had been blonde. Maybe Jonathan had taught her the guitar. He had used that trick to get into girls' pants before.

Or maybe Jonathan just used 'by the way' at random points of conversations like the airhead he was.

"I promised to teach your son the guitar," his friend repeated, slowly, as if speaking to an impaired child. "He thinks it's much cooler than the piano."

"He is a teenage boy," Gabriel replied.

He stopped there, trying to remember where he was going with that argument.

"So are you okay with him dropping his piano classes so he gets some time to learn?"

"Do you really want to discuss this  _ now _ ?"

"You dropped violin to learn piano," Jonathan pointed out, ignoring him.

"I didn't drop violin. I liked violin." As far as he remembered, of course. It had been nearly four decades. "My mother had migraines."

"I can teach him the piano  _ and _ the guitar if you don't want him to stop."

"Not  _ tonight _ ," Gabriel snapped.

His friend not only backed down but shrunk away. He looked down at his burger and ate a few lukewarm fries in awkward silence. Gabriel sipped down his fourth glass of wine.

"Talking about Australia," Jonathan exclaimed, as if startled by his own thoughts, "did I tell you about the six months I spent in Brisbane? I mean, the Claire thing aside. It was  _ good _ six months. Fang loved the hotel pool, for a start. And you wouldn't believe the skyline. You don't have cities like that in France. Did you ever go?"

Gabriel stared at his empty glass, wondering what to do with it, then refilled it.

"Twice. Adelaide, once, and Sydney, a dozen times?"

"Oh, I can't go to Sydney anymore. The hotels won't take me."

Gabriel squinted, perplexed.

"What?"

"Terk set my hotel room on fire," Jonathan explained, referring to Fang's predecessor, a capuchin monkey who had been adopted by another primate lover when Jagged Stone's touring had taken 'too much of a toll on her mood'. "She didn't mean to."

That was likely true. Terk had wanted to destroy everything she touched, but she had never been smart enough to understand the concept of arson.

"Have you considered buying a house there?"

Jonathan scoffed, looking away in distaste. He waved a hand.

"Hotels are simpler," he said. "If I don't like them, I can just leave."

After he had turned sixteen, he had told Gabriel 'this is the longest I've ever stayed in one place'. He had gone from city to city from the day of his birth, his crib dragged along with musical instruments as his mother chased a half-successful career. Without the constant change and motion, he felt stilted. He had hitchhiked to Greece that same summer with no warning. He couldn't stay in one place and lived out of a suitcase. Meanwhile, Gabriel had spent his entire life, bar four years, in the same house.

It was good to be reminded of how much Jonathan loathed to be tied down. He would never commit to anything but music. He wouldn't grow attached, he would expect nothing save for that lack of expectations to be reciprocated. He wouldn't be hurt, which was convenient.

"You  _ do _ remember houses are sellable commodities, right?"

"Blah. I have one with all my stuff, isn't that enough?"

"The mansion in Miami?"

Jonathan nodded, looking around for his glass of beer and belatedly realizing he had not ordered a new one. He called the waitress, giving her a radiant smile and his best English accent (he took the 'incognito' thing seriously). He sounded, roughly, like a New Yorker impersonating a Canadian impersonating a drunken Englishman.

Gabriel served himself another glass of wine and focused on drinking it. He let his companion inquire about every beer on the menu, then hesitate between a Cuvée des Trolls and a Chouffe. The world was fading around him, blurring, moving slower. It was easy to tune Jonathan out and to listen to the indistinct buzz of voices, the clinking of cutlery and glasses, the Elvis song playing in the background. For a burger joint - even a gourmet one - the place was pleasant, with grey walls, grey chairs and red seaters. Beech tables and beech shelves added a nice touch of golden beige to the picture. He let his eyes drift along the bar and up the wall to the metallic ceiling, until Jonathan patted his wrist and startled him out of his reverie.

"- dessert?" his friend was asking.

"I'm sorry?"

"Do you want coffee? Some dessert?"

Gabriel stared at him, struggling to understand what it was he wanted exactly. The syllables eventually turned into words in his mind.

"Coffee," he announced, with a nod at the waitress.

"Please, thank you," Jonathan added.

The waitress nodded and left them, taking their plates with her. Gabriel looked down at his glass and tilted to better see the wine left in it. He frowned when he realized he was being watched. Jonathan was grinning at him.

"What now?" he sighed.

"Nothing," the obnoxious brat replied, giggling.

Gabriel scowled.

"You don't drink much, do you?" Jonathan teased.

The blond rolled his eyes.

"I might have slightly overestimated my alcohol tolerance," he drawled. "Slightly. A coffee will take care of it."

His friend chuckled.

"Sure."

Gabriel clicked his tongue. Jonathan's grin only grew larger. He leaned back into his seat but did not comment further. The waitress came by with another beer and a coffee. She withdrew again. Jonathan drank half the beer in a few gulps, then leaned over the table.

"I'll be right back," he said as, under the table, his hand brushed the side of Gabriel's knee.

The brief touch filled the blond with puzzlement. It hadn't been unpleasant, it hadn't been pleasant, it hadn't been anything at all. He blinked the confusion away and watched his friend pay the bill.  _ So much for free food. _

His coffee was too hot to drink. He pushed it away and stood, joining Jonathan at the bar, figuring that, if the food was paid, they might as well leave. Fresh air would help him more than caffeine. 

A second and a blur later, they were walking down the street.

"Where is your car?" Jonathan asked, fishing his key out of Gabriel's pants pocket, after patting his sides to locate them.

"This way," his companion replied, leading the way to the entrance of an underground parking lot and checking his ticket to figure out on which floor he had parked. He couldn't for the life of him remember.

Jonathan seemed to find his state hilarious (not that he laughed, but his smirk said everything). Gabriel willed himself into sobriety. He buttoned his jacket as they walked down the stairs to the parking lot. As soon as they found themselves alone in the staircase, Jonathan burst into laughter and wrapped an arm around his waist.

"It will  _ pass _ ," Gabriel snapped, which only served to make his date's laughter worse.

Jonathan raised his free hand, in which a phone had mysteriously appeared, and took a selfie.

"For my private album," he explained before Gabriel could murder him. "And to show you your face tomorrow."

The designer gave him a pointed look. Asking him to delete the photograph would have been both undignified and useless. It wasn't a polaroid he could grab and crumple, either. He-

Jonathan pulled him down and stole a kiss.

It was part of the evening plans, so Gabriel ticked a mental checkbox. He felt nothing, which was the best possible outcome. Nooroo had commented on the pointlessness of it all, on the coldness of it, on the selfishness, but Nooroo was back in his box at the mansion.

Gabriel tried to answer the kiss, but Jonathan had already pulled away.

"Come on, you idiot," he laughed, racing down the stairs. "Let's get you home before you pass out."

"I am  _ not _ going to pass out," the blond assured.

He made it to the car.

 

###

 

Chat Noir saltoed over the street and landed on the windowsill of his bathroom window, then jumped into the room itself and untransformed. It was only midnight, but his patrols had turned short since Hawk Moth's sudden (and still worrying) disappearance. Ladybug couldn't even come often: she had schoolwork, she had explained, 'tons of it'. He supposed she deserved some rest. The city was quiet, and they monitored the news, just in case. 

Still, he missed her.

"This was a slow night," he sighed, scratching the back of Plagg's head when the Kwami landed on his shoulder.

"I know. Isn't it  _ great? _ "

Adrien shot him a look. He wanted to protest, but it wasn't like he  _ wanted _ more Akuma attacks.

"I suppose you're not hungry, then?"

Plagg bolted upright, indignant.

"What? I am  _ famished. _ "

His chosen chuckled, walking into his bedroom without quite paying attention to his surroundings. A faint, pulsating light caught his eye. It came from his desk, where a translucent fencer figurine was glowing. A stranger would have mistaken it for a decorative gadget, a fancy trophy in a room full of trophies.

Adrien's blood ran cold.

The figurine was activated by bluetooth when the silent alarm turned on.

"Plagg, transform me," he murmured, voice strangled.

He had felt less anxious facing Akuma.

The silent alarm was on but the house was not on lockdown, which meant either his father had not realized there was an intruder, or he had not been able to react to the danger. What if this was a burglary, or worse?

Stick in hand, he tiptoed to the door and opened it, slipping into the corridor. He looked around and listened for strange noises. The house was dark, which meant his father was sleeping. If he had been absent, Nathalie would have worked late and there would have been light in the office. It was best to check on him first.

Chat Noir took exactly five steps towards the staircase when he heard a loud bang from the hallway. He hurried there, jumping on the stairs railing and sliding down not to be heard. A man was pacing by the door, his ear lit by the faint glow of a phone screen. He wore a baseball cap, a black hoodie and pale jeans.

Adrien only recognized him when he heard a mumbled "Come on,  _ answer _ " spoken in English.

"Jagged?" he exclaimed, hopping next to the rockstar.

Jagged shrieked and stumbled away. He stopped with his back flat against the door, then blinked.

"Chat Noir?" he gasped. Then his face lit up. He grinned and grabbed Adrien by the shoulders.  "Chat Noir! How did you get in?"

"I. Uh. I.  _ Adrien let me in _ ," the young hero blurted out. "Because of the silent alarm. He, uh, was concerned."

Jagged Stone winced.

"Silent a… oooohhh Gabe won't like that at all."

He dragged his hands over his face.

"I was just trying to get out," he cried.

"That's… That's alright, Adrien can call the security company and sort everything out," Chat Noir replied.

Jagged looked more than a bit tipsy.

"Um," the boy muttered, hurrying to the framed picture that covered the alarm keypad. He pushed the frame up. "Adrien gave me the code, I'll let you out."

"Thanks. I tried to call Gabe's assistant but she isn't picking up."

"No problem," Chat replied, typing the code. He peeked at the visitor. "Um. Why are you here, exactly?"

Jagged Stone gestured in the general direction of the staircase and upper floor.

"I had a business meeting with Ga… I mean 'mister Agreste'. And then he did what he always does, he drank to tune me out. So I drove him home."

The keypad beeped. The front door unlocked. Of course, security guards would show up in a matter of minutes, so Adrien had better get rid of Jagged Stone in order to be able to transform back and explain the situation. The rockstar's words perplexed him, however.

"Mister Agreste doesn't drink." That sounded too adamant. He scratched his neck, panicking. "I-I-I mean he doesn't strike me as someone who'd drink. At all."

Jagged opened the door with a look of surprised bliss. He wobbled out of the house and turned back to answer Chat.

"He doesn't. 's why I'm here, really."

He waved and stumbled down the stairs to the courtyard.

"I shougo. Police's gonna show up and then paparazzi and…" He gestured. "Good night, kid!"

And then he turned, saw the gates and deflated.

"I'll open them," Adrien exclaimed, closing the door and returning to the keypad.

He watched the gates open through the window, made sure Jagged Stone had left, then transformed back and called Nathalie so she could handle the whole 'police' thing. She answered  _ his _ call.

 

###

 

Gabriel woke up in his own bed, to faint music and a headache that was nothing of the sort. He felt tired as if he had not slept, and his muscles were aching. He groaned and rolled to the side, swearing when his car keys buried themselves in his face.

He vaguely remembered Jonathan dropping them on his pillow the previous evening.

He sat up, massaging his cheek, and assessed the situation. His jacket was crumpled on the other side of the bed, in a barely recognizable charcoal mass. He had thrown it there right before pretending he was of perfectly sound mind and kissing Jonathan, who had collapsed into laughter. What had Gabriel done then? Clicked his tongue. Shot the man an irritated look.  _ Sulked. _

His memories were a jumble of disconnected images and loose thoughts.

He was wearing one sock. He had no idea of what had happened to the other one. His shirt was unbuttoned to the navel, his belt undone. That had been his own work: Jonathan had stopped him, shaking with giggles. Not that he had objected to the kissing, but that was where he'd drawn the line. Gabriel remembered his own exasperation and thinking, over and over again, ' _ Can't you just follow the plan? Why can't anyone ever follow the plan? _ '.

In other words, he had utterly embarrassed himself. 

Gabriel was not sure of when Jonathan had left. The faint music he had heard was guitar, so there was a fair chance the idiot had  _ stayed _ and retrieved the instrument he had abandoned in Adrien's room, which mean Gabriel would have to explain his presence away, and that was if Jonathan had not volunteered an explanation of his own.

There was a glass of water on the nightstand, next to a torn, crushed, washed out box of aspirin. Gabriel took the box and inspected it. The push-through blister pack it contained no longer needed to be pushed through: the aluminium had been rubbed and crumpled so often that the pills were exposed. There was a strong possibility they had expired ages ago. The date on the box was no longer legible. Gabriel dropped the box back on the nightstand, drank the water and got out of bed.

Dressing himself was a chore. A shower didn't help. He spent ten minutes in front of the mirror, adjusting his jacket and tie, before conceding that it would take makeup for him not to look unkempt.

He walked out of his room, ignoring the music and laughter coming from the library to go to his office instead. Nooroo would appreciate being freed from the safe.

Gabriel arrived by the office door to overhear a conversation between Penny Rolling and, he surmised, Nathalie.

"-  _ does _ take no for an answer. The trick is to make him believe it was his idea. But he's not mean spirited, really, just..."

"I see what you mean," Nathalie answered.

Gabriel walked in, finding the two of them sitting at Nathalie's desk with prints of miss Dupain-Cheng's sketches, forms and a tablet that showed photographs of clothes.

Miss Rolling smiled to him - a commercial, yet engaging smile that showed genuine enthusiasm - and stood to shake his hand, while Nathalie greeted him with a 'sir' and a nod.

"Jagged Stone is visiting," she announced, as if the presence of the man's assistant and the guitar tunes in the background weren't a dead giveaway. "He wished to discuss a matter of the  _ utmost importance _ , as well as some alterations to the pieces he ordered, but that will not require your input."

"Utmost importance?"

"Jagged didn't quite elaborate," moss Rolling intervened. "Though it  _ does _ seem to concern your son."

Was it about the guitar lessons again?

Gabriel pursed his lips.

"I will talk to him."

He peered at the photographs on the tablet and recognized the jacket Jonathan had thrown a tantrum over. The sequins had been taken out and replaced by others that were not 'eminence purple', but a gradient from blue to violet resembling the night sky. The sewing work wasn't finished, but you could picture the final result. It was unbearably gaudy. Jonathan would love it.

"What about the alterations?"

Miss Rolling smiled again.

"There was an incident about  _ sequins _ ," she declared, "which I am deeply sorry about and discussed with Jagged so it does not happen again. Marinette came up with a  _ brilliant  _ solution and solved the issue before I could intervene, however."

He held out his hand so Nathalie would give him the tablet. She did, and he spent half a minute inspecting Ladybug's needlework with polite interest. Inwardly, he thought of nothing and refused to feel.

"She did great," miss Rolling said, grinning. "I'm no fashion expert, but I'd say that kid is going to give you a run for your money in a few years."

Gabriel turned the screen off and handed the tablet back to Nathalie.

"I'm sure you are right," he told Penny. "Would you mind telling Jonathan to join us? I need a moment with Nathalie."

"Of course not. I'll fetch him," she answered, hurrying out.

He closed the door behind her.

"How long have they been here" he asked Nathalie. "It's early." 

"Twenty minutes or so, sir. Adrien was awake and came to greet them while we were talking, and I'm afraid he decided to give the boy an impromptu guitar lesson."

Gabriel took a deep breath. So Jonathan had  _ not _ spent the night. That was something.

He went to the painting that had replaced Adele's portrait and pushed it aside to reveal his safe, then opened it.

"There was an incident with the alarm a little after midnight," Nathalie announced. "But Adrien and I handled it."

He paled and turned to her.

"Did you?"

"From what Adrien told me, you felt… unwell… after your business meeting with Jagged Stone, so he drove you home and tried to let himself out. He accidentally triggered the alarm in the process." 

Gabriel felt himself blushing. His ears and neck burned. Thankfully, he did not have to look at Nathalie, who knew full well there was no ongoing or future business plans to discuss with Jonathan. At least, she was tactful about it.

"It would seem that Chat Noir was patrolling nearby at that precise moment," she added. "Adrien managed to get his attention and to send him investigate what was going on rather than taking on a possible intruder himself."

Didn't that sound familiar?  _ 'Why, mister Agreste, you're so lucky that Plume always seems to be around when your house is raided by burglars, robbers, rabid demon dogs and evil cult members! Imagine what would have happened if she hadn't been there!'.  _

He closed his eyes, glad that she could not see his face.

"How lucky. Still. Let's change the passcodes, since I assume our young hero now knows them."

He kept his voice unconcerned.

"I already did, sir," she replied.

Gabriel took the Miraculous box and put it in his pocket, so he could release Nooroo later on.

"Good," he said, closing the safe and pushing the painting back into place.

"In any case, I got in touch with both the security firm and the police to assure them everything was under control, and the press did not get word of this."

He looked at her and nodded, ever thankful for her discretion and competence. She nodded back, then returned to her work, with her usual detachment. He opened the door and waited for Jonathan and his assistant to return. When they did, Adrien was trotting behind them. The boy was all but hopping into place in excitement.

He opened his mouth.

"Hey, Gabe!" Jonathan yelled (or maybe 'exclaimed', it was hard to see the distinction with a splitting headache). "How are you?"

Gabriel managed not to wince, but he was fairly sure his expression had entirely blanked out. It took him a second too long to nod and answer a 'fine, and you?'. The corner of Jonathan's mouth twitched with the hint of a smirk.

The designer turned to Adrien.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning, Father," the boy replied, respectfully.

Then he peeked at Jonathan and chewed on his lower lip, so blatantly impatient that Gabriel nearly called him out on it. He didn't get to: his nuisance of a best friend, also know as his former date, also known as Jagged Stone, grabbed him by the shoulders.

"I got tickets for Rose Stellar's Bercy show this evening," he said. "Got them for Marinette because I was a bit of an ass to her and she deserved it, and then I figured Adrien could go with her. Now you just have to say yes."

"I'm  _ sorry? _ " Gabriel gasped, nearly choking in outrage.

"She's an old friend. Frienemy. I mean she is secretly a witch who got her singing ability from a demon pact, true story. Anyway I got tickets for a sold out show and Adrien's a nice kid. He deserves one."

Murdering him seemed like an excellent option. There was nothing Gabriel hated more than attempts to interfere with his parenting.

"Penny will go with them," Jonathan continued. "But, since I know just how much you worry about Adrien, Nathalie could go with them. I got four tickets."

Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back and gave his friend his most scathing glare.

"Since you are so determined to make good use of those tickets, why don't you go yourself? I'm sure miss Dupain-Cheng would be overjoyed to be introduced to the most famous pop star by the most famous rock star. It would certainly help her career. The one you threatened to destroy just yesterday, remember?"

Jonathan shrugged and waved his hand dismissively, not even bothering to meet his eyes.

"I can't. I would, but my evening is already booked. I have a hot date who promised me free food and sex, there's no way I'm missing that."

Gabriel choked and coughed, staring at the rockstar with bulging eyes. He couldn't believe the idiot had uttered those words so matter-of-factly in front of Adrien.

" _ Jonathan! _ " he gasped soon as he managed to recover the use of this throat.

His friend raised his eyebrows. He caught the frantic look Gabriel gave Adrien.

"The boy is sixteen. He  _ knows _ sex exists, Gabe."

Adrien flushed crimson and tried to vanish. His father tried not to explode.

"That's not the p-"

He stopped himself and breathed in.

"You should have consulted me  _ before _ getting those tickets, instead of giving my son hopes I might have to dash."

Jonathan gave an exasperated sigh.

"Okay everyone. I need to talk to mister Grumpy pants. Everyone out."

He shoved Adrien through the door, moved out of miss Rolling's way, and glared at Nathalie. Nathalie looked back at him with cold indifference. She did not move.

"Give us a moment," Gabriel told her in a tired voice.

He couldn't take a full-blown tantrum from Jonathan. Not hungover. She nodded, collecting her tablet. Jonathan watched her walk out, giving her a shit-eating grin, and slammed the door behind her.

"Very mature," Gabriel commented.

Jonathan raised a finger to make him wait and leaned towards the door, obviously listening to what was going on outside. They heard footsteps growing distant, then nothing.

"Alright," he said. "I  _ need _ to borrow your kid.  _ Please. _ I'm playing matchmaker, he has to be there."

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"With all due respect, I doubt Adrien and the girl need your help in that regard."

"What? No! The kids will do fine on their own, I'm not talking about the kids!"

That was unexpected. Gabriel stared at him in confusion, then realization hit. Unfortunately, his mouth had started moving of its own a second before.

"What?" he blurted out.

"I need your kid to come to that show, so  _ Nathalie _ can go with him to the show where Marinette is going with  _ Penny _ . Can you help me out, here?"

Gabriel massaged the bridge of his nose.

"They are grown women, Jonathan. They can handle their personal lives on their own."

"Come on! Why would you even stop a sixteen year old from going to a show on a week-end night, and with two chaperones, at that? It's not like I'm telling you he'll hitchhike to Denmark alone."

Gabriel sighed.

"You didn't have to blindside me."

"So I got a little overexcited…"

"If you ever, ever go above my head for anything that concerns my son again, there will be consequences."

"Alright, alright."

Gabriel let out another sigh.

"I  _ suppose _ it can be arranged," he conceded.

Jonathan grinned.

"Great. Now, I'm gonna ask, are you free tonight?"

 

###

 

Chinese takeout, beer and a DVD: Jagged Stone's idea of a good date. Gabriel pushed his lukewarm noodles around with plastic chopsticks. Literally  _ anything _ in his fridge would have tasted and looked better, including the food packaging. Jonathan had bought the meal, however (his notion of 'free food' was baffling), so eating it was the polite thing to do.

He put the takeout box back on the table and left it there.

Jonathan did not notice, because he was busy attempting to get an American DVD to play on an European reader. He was making great progress: namely, he was sitting on the floor, next to the TV, and checking if the movie was on Netflix with his phone.

Gabriel did not comment. He did not want to get his head chewed out. His headache was lingering at the edge of his consciousness, threatening to return.

"Ha!" Jonathan exclaimed, pressing play on the video he had finally located.

The opening credits for 'Melody and Words III' started playing. He fumbled to get the screen orientation right, then carefully placed his phone next to the TV and joined Gabriel on the sofa. He mumbled something about furniture made of squares, then stretched and grabbed his food.

"Why are we watching a romantic comedy?" Gabriel asked.

Jonathan snatched his own box of chewy noodles from the table and dug in.

"It's a great one?"

"Really, now?"

Jonathan looked at Gabriel, with his chopsticks still in his mouth. He tried to stare him down. It didn't work.

"I have a cameo in it," he admitted. "It's a great one."

"Figures."

" _ And _ ," Jonathan continued, in a lecturing tone, "if you pick an interesting movie for a date, you are doing it wrong."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

His friend planted his chopsticks into his noodles.

"It's  _ strategy _ ," he explained. "You have to chose something that seems bearable enough to be watched, if not, you know, fascinating. Then you watch, maybe, fifteen, twenty minutes, start to lose interest…" By that point, he was talking over the actors.  "And since you gave the movie a chance, you can just, say, focus on more interesting things."

He put his hand on Gabriel's thigh.

"I see," the blond commented.

He still felt nothing, but at least he had not cringed away. He had worried he would. He had never been one to enjoy unexpected physical contact, unless it came from a loved one (and even then).

"And here I thought you would go for the good old 'yawning and stretching'."

"Nah. The 'yawning and stretching' is for when you want plausible deniability. If you're sure you're getting laid, what's the point?"

"Oh, are you sure, now?" Gabriel teased, eyebrows raised.

_ Are you? _

The hand was still on his thigh. He did not push it away. Maybe he felt  _ slightly _ uncomfortable, but it could have been worse, and this was what he had signed up for. For all intents and purposes, he should have been reciprocating.

Jonathan chuckled.

"Oh yeah, I'm sure. You made it very clear last night," he stated, hand slipping up and up until it reached Gabriel's belt. 

He gave a little tug and moved his hand away.

Gabriel rolled his eyes, embarrassed. His companion laughed.

"We're gonna have to work on your alcohol tolerance.  _ Really.  _ You held your booze better at sixteen." He leaned forward and grabbed a beer can on the table, then handed it to Gabriel, who took it but did not open it. "Not that yesterday wasn't fun. Not sure you remember, though."

"I remember."

"Everything?"

"The gist of it."

Jonathan's grin turned predatory. Gabriel gave him a pointed look.

"And you might want to keep the teasing to a minimum. I might reconsider, you know?"

Jonathan countenance changed in an instant. He moved away, eyebrows raised, and gave Gabriel an air of cool defiance. He finally put his takeout box down, slamming it on the table. Then, he climbed on Gabriel's knees and smirked.

"Is that right? Cause you were  _ pretty _ determined yesterday."

Gabriel sank back into the sofa as Jonathan grinned and leaned closer.

He had expected his friend to go along with the idea like he went along with everything: a spur of the moment decision, quickly acted on, quickly over with and forgotten. At no point had he considered that Jonathan could turn into the pursuer. And yet here he was,  _ pursuing. _ It was not part of the plan. Gabriel felt a twinge of guilt - fleeting - and then doubt.

Maybe Nooroo had been right on the selfishness of his plans. He had not aimed to stir actual enthusiasm, let alone interest.

Maybe it was still time to change his mind.

Then again, Jonathan was an adult. He could take care of himself.

"You know," Gabriel told him, "if you are so eager, we can forgo the 'date' and move straight to the bedroom."

His friend huffed and moved back to the other seat. He crossed his arms, sulking.

"What kind of slut do you think I am? We are going to  _ watch a movie _ , and hold hands, and  _ maybe _ , if you're nice enough, we'll think about doing more."

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"If you insist."

"I insist," Jonathan said, grabbing his food and shoving cold noodles into his mouth.

He chewed with determination.

"Fine," Gabriel sighed, turning to the TV screen.

They had missed a good chunk of the movie, and he found himself staring at a redhead in a jewelled swimsuit who was dancing in front of cameras. He gathered she was the heroine.

"Who is she?"

Jonathan swallowed his noodles.

"That's Sally. She's a young singer who's trapped into a terrible pop career by her evil producer Bob, but she actually wants to be a rock star."

"They just called her Meg."

"Sally," Jonathan insisted. The man refused to use his own name. It was no wonder he would assign new ones to fictional characters. "And that's Harry."

He was pointing at a sullen young man with dark hair that 'Sally' greeted as 'Billy'.

"Harry," Gabriel repeated.

"He's a composer in a rock band that's looking for a lead singer. The thing is, he thinks Sally is an autotuned hack because her albums are edited to hell and back."

"So he cannot merely listen to her singing, realize the errors of his ways, and offer her that singer position? And marry her," Gabriel added as an afterthought.

"Nope. Right now, he has to compose a few songs for her upcoming album, since Bob won't let her write anything."

"You don't say."

"Just watch. It's fun. And I have my first scene thirty minutes in."

Gabriel let out a long suffering sigh but did as commanded. The movie proved boring enough for Jonathan's interest to wander back to him well before his first cameo.

 

###

Gabriel stood in his shower, under a rain of scalding water, trying to wash away the strangeness of Jonathan's hands on his skin. He couldn't quite shake off his faint unease. The wrong body against his own, the wrong hands caressing him, the wrong voice, the wrong lips. It was not Jonathan's fault. There was nothing  _ wrong _ with Jonathan.

But he wasn't Adele.

How did you learn? How did you go from twenty years of marriage with the only person you had ever touched to just…

There had to be a way to rip yourself out of your own shape and  _ evolve _ . There had to be a way to build something new.  _ Fake it until you make it. _ If he kept trying, no matter how unsettling the attempts, he was bound to get used to the unknown. He just had to stick it out a little longer.

He scrubbed himself clean then briskly dried himself - there was no reason to dawdle - and returned to his bedroom. He had showered last and left Jonathan in bed, outwardly content, if suspiciously silent. 

Jonathan was now  _ sulking. _

He was still lying in bed, arms crossed, expression sullen, and made a point to look at the window rather than at Gabriel. To add to the dramatic effect, he waited for him to have crossed the room and reached the bed to break the silence.

"You're just going through the motions," he grumbled.

An accurate accusation if Gabriel had ever heard one. He didn't answer. Instead, he sat on the bed and waited for Jonathan to continue talking. He needed more material to work with if he was to decide on a reaction.

Jonathan gave him a reproachful look.

"You know what?" he exclaimed, slamming his own chest. "I'm  _ Jagged Stone _ . There's plenty of people out there who are _ actually interested _ and I could have spent a  _ great _ evening with any one of them. I don't even need to look, I just have to take five steps out of my hotel and…" He snapped his fingers. "Date!"

As a businessman, Gabriel had found that handling people only required four types of interactions: bribery, threats, blackmail and placation. Jonathan responded best to being placated. Gabriel shifted on the bed, lying down against him, and kissed him. He made sure to wrap an arm around his chest and to display a semblance of need, if not desire. The trick was to appear emotionally vulnerable, just enough for Jonathan to feel somehow ashamed of getting angry.

As expected, Jonathan relented.

He took a deep breath.

" _ Why _ would you fuck someone you don't want to fuck?" he asked, sounding pained.

_ There's a logic to this, _ Gabriel nearly replied. He nearly explained it all. Nearly.

"I did want this," he said.

"Yeeeaaah. D'you know how clear someone has to be for _me_ to arrive at the conclusion that I'm not wanted?"

The joke got a chuckle out of the blond.

Jonathan rolled his eyes.

"And it's not like you never do shit you totally hate to get something you want."

Silence fell. Gabriel let himself relax, leaning a little more against his companion. The physical contact was still odd, but not revolting. A minute went by.

"I should live a little," he explained. "And you love sex, so this should be a win-win."

Jonathan gave him a dubitative look that left no doubt on what, exactly, he had thought of Gabriel's performance. To be fair, it was deserved: Gabriel had indeed 'gone through the motions', not managing to summon the slightest spark of genuine interest. It wasn't for lack of trying, but he was struggling to feel anything at all. Not to mention the experience would have been awkward in the best of circumstances.

He pulled back and frowned at Jonathan.

"As you pointed out yourself,  _ I married my first girlfriend!  _ What did you  _ expect?" _

Jonathan's eyes went wide. He sat up, breaking into a silly grin.

"Oh my god, you're a  _ virgin! _ "

Gabriel groaned, falling back onto the mattress and massaging his face.

"You do know I have a son, right? I remember you being a terrible influence on him."

Jonathan chuckled.

"Yeah, but having a kid doesn't mean that you have, you know…"

He made a crude gesture. Gabriel cringed.

"Could we  _ not _ discuss this?"

Jonathan stared at him in disbelief, motioning at their naked bodies, back and forth and back again. The blond let out a long suffering sigh and put his arm over his face so he could ignore him. He felt the mattress shift and tilt, then Jonathan rolled over him and started trailing kisses from his shoulder to his chest.

"Don't worry," the jackass said. "I'll be gentle."

"You absolute  _ idiot _ ."

Jonathan laughed and dropped a kiss on Gabriel's nipple. It sent a wave of heat straight to his groin. Just as he gasped from the shock of it and reached for him, his companion rolled out of bed. Gabriel, breath short and eyes wide, watched him locate his jacket and rummage through his pockets.

He wasn't that oblivious. He couldn't  _ possibly _ be that oblivious.

_ He  _ is _ that oblivious _ , Gabriel told himself when Jonathan got a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket and dropped his jacket back on the floor, where it did not belong. The pack of cigarettes contained a lighter and a joint, which the musician promptly lit.

"Not  _ inside _ !" Gabriel snapped.

Jonathan opened a window and stayed under it, blowing the smoke outside.

"Better?" he mouthed.

"I thought you'd gone to rehab. Three times."

"Weed doesn't count."

Gabriel sighed and dropped the topic, reclining back into the bed instead. He closed his eyes. He felt drowsy.

"We should get dressed," he commented. "It wouldn't be wise for you to spend the night."

There was no answer, but he heard shuffling. Jonathan joined him in bed, finding a comfortable position that involved pulling the blankets over them and wrapping an arm around him.

" _ Or _ I could stay and wait for Adrien to leave for tomorrow morning's photo shoot before getting up," he said. "That's what you wanna avoid, isn't it? Your son knowing about this?"

Gabriel considered his words. There was no point explaining. He would only risk giving a reason to lie his companion had not considered.

"Yes."

"Well then I'm good until eleven," Jonathan mumbled.

His friend mulled over that.

"I suppose so."

 

###


End file.
